AlienRespawn messed up everything...

Hey guys, I tried to install AlienRespawn on my AW 18, after I installed it, it messed up my over provisioning for Samsung 840 Pro and the Samsung Magician's OP function does not allow me to customize % OP anymore. On top of that, without $40 USD, AlienRespawn is virtually useless... I already uninstalled the program but I still cannot reverse the "damage" it has done.

Before I installed AlienRespawn, I have 3 partitions for Windows 8 Pro:
300 MB Recovery || 100 MB Partition || 400 GB Primary || 76 GB OP
Now I have:
300 MB Recovery || 100 MB Partition || 462 GB Primary || 13.5 GB Recovery || 898 Recovery

For some reason, I cannot remove the latter 2 partitions and shrink my Primary back to 400 and have my OP back...

Any advise is appreciated. -- Yann

 

This was predictable, as Alien Respawn needs to claim disk space in order to work the way it is designed to. Unfortunately, there is no way I have noticed to select a custom installation to take control and dictate where and how much space it is permitted to take control of.

Uninstall Alien Respawn if you haven't already. Use Diskpart to delete the extra partitions. Once those partitions are unallocated disk space you can shuffle things around the way you had them before by using the Windows Disk Management Utility. Samsung Magician probably does not work at the moment because it no longer has available disk space that it can assume control of over-provisioning.

I have not had a good experience with Alien Respawn under Windows 8. It was downright awesome with Windows 7, but I gave up on it with Windows 8 and went back to using third-party imaging utilities instead.

 

I do this when I get any new alienware and it might be something helpful to others.

1. Make alien spawn recovery disks.
2. Clean install without respawn.
3. Keep all of my imp data on the second drive.

This way I have the luxury of a clean install but have recovery disks for a rainy day. These days rather than recovery disk, I just keep a USB drive with original discs sitting in the box.

 

It's always wise to make recovery media. I have BluRay and USB. There really isn't a big advantage to having recovery partitions. It's a convenience that some appreciate, but it's also disk space that can be used for something else.

 

Spot on mr.fox, it's the storage space that is wasted in keeping recovery partition, especially if one is using a ssd, it's both storage and speed.

 

you have to understand that these alienware programs are actually reskinned programs of other vendors.. like alienware autopsy is pc doctor... and respawn is..something from them as well maybe..I forget, anyways, they're missing updates from the original designers, as DELL/ALIENWARE are months if not half a year behind on it, for these programs, and things usually moving too fast for them to keep up with it and make it very functional.

 

That's not accurate. The Alienware Respawn software receives frequent live updates, pushed to it directly from SoftThinks and there is a different version specifically for Windows 8. It's awesome with Windows 7, but it is just not that great with Windows 8... but, it is not the only product that does not work as well with Windows 8. Alienware Autopsy also receives live updates. These live updates come from the vendor, so if anyone is behind on product support that would be the software vendor, not Dell/Alienware.

 

Thanks for the info guys, I ended up just reformatting and reinstalling the drive because Windows showed 6 partitions while Samsung Magician showed 7... I decided to use the "Windows 7 Recovery," as it is called now, to create images of my system.

 

Actually your right, that it does receive a lot of updates. but they are not very frequent, compared to other computers with pc doctor... meh its still rebranded software.