Re: three XP queries

"chequer" wrote

Rock,

I thought that when you r/clicked on a program in the Siart menu and it
didn't show 'Shortcut' in the propperty box,
ie.General/Shortcut/Compatability, then it was a program and shouldn't be
deleted.

Deleting a shortcut just removes the shortcut, not the file it points to, so yes be careful when deleting. If it's the actual file, not a shorcut, make sure you really want to delete it. That's why it's a good idea to keep the arrow on icons on the desktop to signfiy a shortcut.

As for knowing how to restore the system with an XP installation CD
or recovery CD, I wouldn't have a clue. Is a recovery CD similar to what
used to be a 'Startup' floppy disc?
Should I find out how to make or get a recovery CD?
I remember uninstalling a 'Nortons' program once and it took out vital
files with it.

When you buy a computer the vendor has to provide you with some means of restoring the system. They have 3 choices:

1. XP installation CD
2. Recovery CD
3. Hidden partition on the hard drive which contains an image of the drive as received from the factory.

Some time ago the norm was for the vendor to provide an XP installation CD and CDs for the drivers and packaged software. This is the best, and in my opinion one should never buy a system that doesn't come with an XP installation CD.

To cut costs they started to go the recovery CD route, and then to the hidden partition. In some installations with a hidden partition, when the system is first booted and for a certain period of time after that, it gives a nag message for you to make a recovery cd using their proprietary process.

All these recovery CDs and hidden partition processes are set by the vendor. Some will allow for non destructive repair, and others will just wipe out the contents of the drive and restore the factory drive image. If data hasn't been backed up then you loose it.

So you should always, always have a full and complete backup of all important data. You should also know how to restore the operating system, the drivers and software, and now how to restore data from the backup. Check the documentation that came with the computer or talk to the vendor's tech support to find out how this is done for your system. Then you need to make sure you know how it works. When something goes wrong is not the time to be figuring out how the recovery process functions.

For backup there are several options. One is to use an imaging program. This makes an exact image of the partition which can be saved on CD/DVD or to another drive - internal or external. Imaging to an external USB 2.0 / Firewire drive works well. Then occasionally burning an image to DVD gives you redundancy. Restores can be done of the entire partition or individual files / folders. These work well and make it easy to recover from a drive crash. Examples of this are:

Acronis True Image
Norton Ghost 10
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows
CasperXP

The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's PC BackUP, Sonic’s Backup MyPC or SecondCopy from www.centered.com. There are other backup programs out there as well. This can do a complete backup or backup individual files and folders to DVD/CD and other drives.

Next is ntbackup which is installed in XP Pro but not Home. For Home if you have the XP CD it can be found in the \MSFT\ValueADD\Ntbackup folder as ntbackup.msi or download it from here: http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home

Ntbackup cannot backup to DVD and will only backup to CD if other 3rd party CD burning software is available and even with that it will not span CDs, i.e. one CD is the limit, which is not very practical. It is geared toward tape drives or other hard drives. It will work ok in backing up to an external hard drive (or network drive) and restoring individual files / folders is ok, but if you need to restore the complete drive it's cumbersome. XP must be installed first. If you have XP Pro, Ntbackup has an ASR feature (Automated System Recovery) which makes this restore of a boot/system drive easier but still it takes much longer than an imaging program, and I never got it to restore my system to full functionality as it was when the backup was made. It also mandates that a floppy drive be available. One floppy disk is created in the ASR process and there is no way around that. ASR is not available on XP Home addition.

Another is simply copying data files to a CD. Zip them up to make them smaller if you want

--
Rock [MVP Windows Shell/User]

.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Computer problem, need help
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    (soc.retirement)