X60 & AVStation Now

I got an X60 a couple of weeks ago and absolutely love it...

There was one weird thing though when I had it delivered from Inmac - it appeared that Windows XP Pro had been registered already to another person - in this case, it was Fred.Olsen cruise lines. It had a very odd hard disk setup - I think it was a mere 18gb C: drive. So I decided to reinstall the OS from the recovery disk.

During this OS recovery, I said remove all existing partitions etc. from the disk and create a new one. Well, there is now one C: drive that's 86gb, and XP installed fine onto it.

When I try to run the AVStation Now software (e.g. when the X60 is off, hit one of the music / picture / movie buttons on the keyboard, or the AVS button on the remote), the PC starts to boot up - the boot screen says "AVStation Now..." but then the PC boots into my normal XP installation. After I have signed into XP with my username/password, the AVStation premium application fires up... (I think - I might have to try it again...)

I tried running the AVStation restore CD. It asked me if I wanted to create a partition - either the whole disk, or a C & D - the minimum size for the C would be 20gb. I decided not to proceed, as it has taken me this 2 weeks to get everything set up and installed as I like it

So... please can anyone suggest what I should do to get the proper AVStation Now working???

Thanks in advance!

 

Oh yeah - another thing... I can find no way to show that the HDD is actually 100gb and not 86gb.

The Disk Management tool simply reports that the partition takes up the whole disk - there is no unallocated space, or any other space for that matter!

And as mentioned previously, the Windows XP installation didn't recognise more than 86gb to start with...

Odd.

 

because it IS a 86GB HDD. The trick is, manufacturers use 1.000.000.000 bytes as 1GB, but computers use 1024x1024x1024 bytes as 1GB.
Hence 100.000.000.000 manufacturer's bytes = 93GB. But yeah, you're right, my system also display only 86GB... so where is that missing 7GB?

 

Well, in the review available at http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2867&review=Samsung+X60, there is a comment:

... which led me to believe that the AVS Now installation would be in the "missing" space.

Still, my original question still holds -- what do I need to do to get AVS Now working properly? (and I'd really like *not* to have to reinstall XP and all the other software etc. that has taken me this last fortnight to get 'just right').

 

Picking up from the overlapping thread about HDD capacity on the R65, my conclusion is that the AV Station restore disk (which instructions somewhere say you must run first) creates a well-hidden partition. Personally, I have been living quite happily without using the AV Station. I use hibernation which means that I can get Windows restarted quite quickly, and I use the Rightmark CPU Clock utility to drop the voltage, so I probably don't have a battery life penalty for running my AV applications under Windows. And, until the bigger HDDs become available, I am struggling for space.

To go back to your problem of how to get the AV Station partition in place without destroying your current installation, my suggested work-around is to use Acronic TrueImage or similar, to create an image of your present installation and burn this image to one or more DVDs. Then you can run the AV Station restore disk and afterwards reinstall your image back to the remaining space.

Hope this helps,

John

 

Yeah, that might be what I'll need to do... at least if I stuff things up, I can always get back to where I was!

The thing that did (and does) confuse me was that when I tried the AVS Now restore, it prompted me to create a partition (and was going to call it C:!?) on the already partitioned space - i.e. on the 86gb that's already there, rather than on the full 93mb space...

I'm just wondering if anyone has experience of an X60 that worked out-of-the-box? What happens? What drive space do you have?

 

YourMum, I regret to inform u that I strongly believe a re-installation of ur Os is in order, should u wish to restore ur 'true' AVStation function. I've some experience with this installation process(as b4 I restore my X11's OS+AVStation, I did read e AVStation restoration manual very thoroughly).

The key reason is because I believe the AVStation restoration process 'preps' the system HDD with a hidden partition in a special manner(so special that most disk management software didn't detect this really hidden partition, as reported by many others), hence I have serious doubts that cloning ur existing HDD out into an image, & restoring that image AFTER u done AVStation will work.

My key point: u HAVE to restore AVStation B4 OS installation, should u wan a hassle-free environment frm then on...no 2 ways abt it. The AVStation restoration manual DID mention something abt giving us the leeway to NOT partition our HDD should we partitioned it ALREADY(hence, if u opt for this option, I suppose ur EXISTING partition wun be destroyed, but I dun wanna be respossible should ur OS be wiped out), but I personally didn't, & wouldn't opt for that.

 

Hmm. Thanks for those thoughts, ralliart12.

It's weird that when I tried to run the AVStation Now restore CD that it only saw the 86gb disk... Ralliart12, when you ran the process, what size disk did the restoration program see? Also, what drive letters do you now have?

 

That was a long time back, not even sure whether my HDD space is indicated during any part of e restoration process. However, I only have a "C:\" now, cos I chosed to have my everything on ONE partition. There is likely to be a spooky AVStation partition hidden(nicely) somewhere again.

 

I also have problems understanding how AV works..
I did the following:
I wanted to have dual boot with Linux, so I installed SuSE 9.0 linux and partitioned the HDD using the tool available with the Suse installer. I did NOT TOUCH the AVStation partition (too bad I didn't write down exactly what the partition table said, but I believe that in the column where the type of partition is written it said EISA). Then i simply reduced the size of the C drive NTFS partition, added extended partition, added one more logical windows partition (FAT, because this tool cannot do ntfs), added linux partitions, and installed linux.
I installed GRUB loader, which automatically recognized bootable windows and linux partitions, but not the AVStation - at this point, I was in the same situation as you. When I tried to launch the AV St., it would show the intro screen and then GRUB took over and offered windows or linux.
So I realized I needed to ADD MANUALLY AVStation to the boot-up menu. So I cloned the windows section menu item and changed HD0,1 to HD0,0 (because the AVStation partition appears at the very beginning of the drive)ANd this works. So now I have tripple boot.
This is a solution, but if someone knows a better solution, which would not require any user input during the bootup in order to launch the AVStation, I would be glad to know.
Cheers.

PS
My AVS partition is 3.4GB, and the total space appears as 86GB. Samsung mentions that about 15GB are taken up by Samsung Recovery solution. Don't know any details but it may explain the size issues.
One more thing - now after repartitioning, the AVStation does not appear anymore as "EISA" type, but "HTFS/NTFS"....?

 

I have the image of the EISA partition, but I strongly doubt it would be the partition for AVS Now. Two facts make me think this:
1. Before reinstalling my laptop, the REGULAR windows started, when I hit one of the AVS buttons.
2. I have never booted this partition (did not now how to do it), but a close inspection did not reveal any AVS files in the image... Once I will have a virtual machine, I will try to boot it. BTW it is a regular NTFS file system, just the filesystem flag was intentionally changed, so it can' be used from within Windows.

 

X60 is used by more than one manufacturer, lol

 

So I see... but the Samsung one is better than the IBM one

 

yes could be if you want a bigger widescreen.

my X60 is only 12" screen, but 3.5 pounds and it runs for a full 8 hours on a single battery charge.
It's no good for movies, but it gets internet access from almost anywhere - even in the middle of a park.

 

The Samsung X60 has also a big benefit the IBM X60 doesn't has: It's battery won't explode: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=BATT-LENOVO

 

I suspect my input might be a few months too late, but I guess it can't do any harm... as some may remember, i am a Samsung tech for the laptop support phone line, and as such i could be considered the fount of ALL knowledge

The 86Gb is due to two programs, AV station AND Firstware recovery pro.

AV station if i recall, takes up around 3Gb on the X60 and firstware the remainder.

If you are re-installing Windows, you will most likely end up nuking AV station but Firstware is in a hidden partition so it "should" remain intact depending on how exactly you decide to format your drive.

To re-install AV station after formatting and re-installing windows i'm afraid the only way of reliably re-creating the partition is to wipe the HDD completely inlcuding any partitions, and boot off the AV station disk. Then following the instructions included with the notebook, trying to install onto a pre-partitioned disc will almost always fail at some stage.

In order to administer Firstware recovery pro, to either remove it completely or modifiy it's behaiviour, can only be undertaken within windows itself, however you can recover from a pre-created firstware recovery file by tapping / mashing the F6 key on boot up.


There you go, some nuggets from the "Dark Side"

 

Wow, thanks for your input - quite interesting!

 

Very useful - thanks Brigand21. So I should be able to recover some of the "lost" space... I will have to investigate further, as Windows seems to only report the 1 partition of 86GBb... I might try out PartitionMagic or something like that to see what's up.

I think I decided that I don't need AVStation Now, so I could at least get that back... after a quick look online to see what Firstware Recovery Pro does, it looks like it tells the BIOS that the disk is actually smaller than it is (see http://www.phoenix.com/en/Products/...x+FirstWare/FirstWare+Recover+Pro/default.htm)

Frankly, I don't need that either. I do backups of the data I need, and system restore points in XP are good enough for my needs... so I shall see if I can reclaim all the disk space... (famous last words, perhaps!!)