Laptop Crash and HelpDesk - We need to format this laptop

When my laptop crashed. Dutifully i presented my dead laptop to the helpdesk team. and they revert back saying

We need to FORMAT this laptop.

Ideally I keep my backups but for some weird reason I believed that it was possible to recover the laptop. and perhaps helpdesk was just trying to get rid of my request by doing a 2 hour format instead of say 20 hr recovery.

So here is what happens

Day 1 - Laptop crashes , I start working on office desktop which I normally used to do remote connection. Give laptop to helpdesk

Day 2 - We need to FORMAT this laptop (all this verbal and nothing in writing)

Morning XP installation CD taking me till C:\ but HECK .. the laptop is PGP encrypted so I can only see JUNK characters and this is precisely why the helpdesk cannot copy their ntldr.dll from CD to say #$@#%@#

Afternoon - They got the PGP decryption CD but that was taking a long time.

Evening - PGP not able to find its own directory

Night - Helpdesk team tells me your Hard disk has a bad sector We need to FORMAT this laptop (still verbal only)

Day 3 - I was told to work in second shift for next 4 days. Morning and afternoon lost.

Evening - Helpdesk tells me - PGP is hung and you say GOOD BYE to your data. Users are themselves required to keep backup of their important data. (Please note : usb drives were disabled in all office laptops). We can not do anything except FORMAT this laptop

(I am lucky to have a desktop as well as a laptop so my work mostly on putty and sqlplus is not getting hampered at all )

Day 4 - I decide to take things in my own hands. All the while helpdesk maintains, If I could decrypt this laptop whats the use of having PGP security. its a failure and so

IT CAN NOT be DONE

I check the website of PGP and find a good note. here http://tinyurl.com/yhdp73e

Afternoon: Ask them to give me CDs for XP reinstallation and PGP decryption. (Helpdesk says they can not give CDs as they do not give it). A lot of cajoling and pulling strings later they oblige.

5 min later : I am able to start the decryption process.

11:30 pm : decryption completes. I am able to see my data. decide to move to home and try out things there. I had whole weekend to do the easy stuff. :)

12 pm : Need admin password to cd to C:\windows. Pune folks wont give me administrator password as its not their policy. Called up Mumbai folks they are able to give passwords but none of them work. Perhaps as they use different set of passwords.

Called the pune folks again. telling them i am coming to office by now its 1 am in night.

1 :15 am yesternight : Helpdesk folks type in Administrator password.

(A little talking and a cup of tea afterwords I am told that the person whom I was working with has put his papers and that he is serving is NOTICE PERIOD). I am like wow!!! Lucky ME.

2:30 am yesternight : Repair of Windows XP completes successfully

3 am : I am home and crash in bed. But I am left with a bittersweet taste

- Why helpdesk did not help me recover the laptop data if it was recoverable.

- A person in Mumbai is able to share admin pwd but a person who is serving notice period is citing policies and procedures . Intresting difference. (perhaps It should be other way round)

- As soon as I can see the recovered data I am asked , Can I close the ticket NOW ?

Is helpdesk about helping people or closing maximum number of tickets in minimum amount of time. What about help of the 'helpdesk'

PS : I am configuring unison to backup my laptop data to Ubuntu box. Putty history log files, Chat transcripts, desktop will all be synced up apart from some important project folders.

Archived mail pst files will be synced.

keypass will be synced.

(I think this should be enough for insuring me for next time)