"Sebastian G." <seppi@seppig.de> wrote in message
news:5o4obpFkpv93U1@mid.dfncis.de...

> Or, most likely, it's just the user seeing things that aren't there.

A number of manufacturers include a small, non-Windows partition to store
BIOS configuration information and some limited set of Windows configuration
files. In principle, they can then restore a completely dead system to at
least working in a relatively automated fashion. I've also seen laptop
manufacturers keep their hibernate image on a "hidden" partition, although I
haven't seen that in a while.

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