Re: SP2 Very Very bad for me

From: Don Burnette (d.burnette_at_clothes.comcast.net)
Date: 10/16/04 

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 11:53:11 -0500

phal wrote:
> I have had so many problems trying to get this thing to work. I
> finally suceeded in installing the thing this morning while retaining
> my right click desktop menu.
> Windows Update then told me there was an update to SP2, I downloaded
> that and it DELETED EVERY WEB PAGE SHORTCUT IN EVERY FOLDER I HAD ON
> MY DESKTOP. HUNDREDS OF PAGES OF STUFF SAVED SINCE 2002. There was
> stuff in there that I had accumulated and saved from my last
> computer. Pages and pages of ebay stuff, shortcuts to past and
> present auctions, all the hard to find ebay phone numbers and web
> pages, shortcuts to webpages I will never be able to find again. The
> shortcut to this forum and 10 or 12 others that I use to troubleshoot
> my comp.
> I even went back and restored a setpoint from 3 days earlier and they
> are still gone. When you install SP2 update, you had better save
> everything on the desktop somewhere else on your computer or risk
> losing it all. I am not happy

I too keep important data on my hard drive, data that has years worth of
work in it, and would be devastating for me to loose. Years of Quicken
financial information, years of tax returns filed with Turbo Tax, family
pictures, legal information from a nasty divorce, etc etc.

I am sure others already have, but may I recommend a organized and
disciplined back up schedule?

Personally, I invested in an external USB2 hard drive, and Drive Image 7. I
have scheduled, on a weekly basis, a complete image of my system to the
external hard drive. This is done every Sunday morning at 2:00 am. When I
get up on Sunday, I take the external usb drive and store it in a safe place
separate from where my computer is. I also on Saturday evening, do my
maintenance, cleaning out spyware with ad aware and spy bot, compact my OE
messages, and clean up my temporary files.

So at any point in time, should I have a hard drive failure or software
corruption, I can restore my complete system as it was on the last image,
which would be no older than 6 days. And it would restore in a matter of
minutes. I have used it to restore once, and it worked flawlessly.

As I am sure your aware by now, system restore is no substitute for a back
up plan.

And also, saving items to the desktop could be asking for trouble. Think of
it as a temporary folder, opening your folders each time you log on, and
saving their settings each time you log off. Any files on your desktop,
would be very susceptible to corruption if things went bad while you are
logged on. It would be much safer to store in their own folders in a
directory, my documents being a very good one to use. System Restore does
not even monitor or use the my documents folder.

I would recommend some systematic back up plan to everyone that has a pc. It
is not a matter of if things go south, it is a matter of when. Hard drives
fail, bad sectors develop, software gets corrupted, etc etc.

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with SP2. Below is what I did to
install, and it went without a hitch. Good luck in getting your system back
to good working order.

I did do the following just prior to installing XP:

Checked for adware/spyware with Ad Aware 6.0
Checked for latest updates for my peripherals
Checked for latest updates for my applications
Updated my AV software virus definition files.
Ran a virus scan.
Did a disk cleanup, cleaning out temp files and cookies.
Did a chkdsk on my system drive.
Imaged my system partition with PowerQuest Drive Image to external hard
drive. ( if no imaging software, I would strongly recommend , at the least,
backing up all important data files, and settings ). Take precaution when
deciding what to back up, make triple sure you have any data files that are
very important to you backed up in some way, either to another partion, hard
drive, cdr, floppy.

Downloaded SP2 network version ( complete 266 mb file) from windows update
catalogue site.
Disabled my AV software.
Installed SP2. I think it took about 15 minutes for me, maybe 20 at the
most.

After installation:
Ran disk defragger on system partition. Made sure AV software was activated
again. Checked my main applications and programs I run to make sure no
issues.

No problems, and my computer appears to be a little snappier. No conflicts
with any of the security features, matter of fact i have a hardware nat
firewall with my router for my cable internet, and have the XP firewall on,
and no issues. I also really like the pop up blocker. 

-- 
Don Burnette

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