In: Root » Computers and technology » Windows XP » Creating a backup of your system under Windows XP
As painful as it might be to admit, some Windows problems just won’t go away. In spite of everything you have tried, everything suggested by local computer experts, the manufacturer’s technical support center, and the combined wisdom of the Internet, your computer continues to display symptoms of a serious problem. Neither the Windows Knowledge Base nor any of the advice in this article contains anything that does much good. At some point in the process of troubleshooting, the amount of wasted time and aggravation you expend on the whole mess is greater than the value of the solution. When you feel like you’ve been beating your head against a brick wall, it’s often best to admit defeat and resort to extreme measures. Ultimately, you must shift your goal from identifying and repairing the problem that caused your computer to crash to restoring the computer to normal operation. It’s quite possible that you will never know exactly what caused the original problem, but it’s more important to get back to work than to find an elegant solution to a problem. When you have eliminated a hardware failure as the cause of the problem and nothing else restores your computer to normal operation, the next-to- last thing to try is reinstalling Windows. You can try a “repair” installation, but because that preserves many of the existing registry settings and support for all of the programs installed on the computer, it won’t always fix a truly monumental Windows disaster. If you do try the Repair option, but it does not solve your problem, a full Windows installation that replaces the whole operating system with a new copy of the software probably will. However, this creates a completely new registry, so you will also have to reinstall all the other programs installed on the computer. And if that doesn’t work, it’s likely that your system is infected with one or more particularly ugly viruses or spyware that your security programs don’t know how to eliminate, or something else has severely corrupted the files on your hard drive. At this point, if you can’t get rid of the problem, your only remaining choice is to reformat your C: drive (the boot drive), install Windows from scratch, and then rebuild your entire file system. Don’t take any of these steps unless they’re absolutely necessary, and don’t jump into them until you have done as much as you can to preserve your data and program files. Reinstalling Windows from scratch will destroy all of the system configuration settings, including your Internet Explorer bookmarks, the icons and shortcuts on the Windows desktop, and all of the other customized settings that define the look and feel of Windows on your computer. It will also destroy the registry entries for all of the programs and utilities that had been installed on the computer. Reformatting the drive is even more serious you will lose absolutely everything on that drive unless you have a backup. Before you start this process, be sure you have enough time to complete it. Between reloading and activating Windows, installing the latest Windows service pack, and installing the drivers for your network adapter, your sound and video controllers, all your other peripheral devices, and all of the utili- ties and application programs that you want to run on this computer, you can easily spend four or five hours (at the very least) before you get the computer back to normal. If you have a project that requires your immediate attention, it’s often best to move to a different computer to complete the job before you try to deal with restoring the original machine. Preserving Your Data Before you reload Windows or reformat the C: drive, do what you can to save the files stored on that drive. If possible, copy the important files from that hard drive to one of these destinations: A second physical drive in the same computer An external hard drive temporarily connected to the same computer through a USB port or a FireWire port A hard drive located on a different computer or on a network server A tape drive, a CD or DVD drive, or other removable media drive An online backup service. These services connect to your computer through the Internet and store your data in a secure location. The com- panies charge a monthly or annual fee that varies with the amount of data and the specific services each company provides. Online backup ser- vices are generally intended for regular periodic backups rather than one-time emergency use. Major online backup services include: http://backup.com BackUp Solutions http://www.backuphelp.com Data Protection Ser vices http://www.dataprotection.com Data Protector http://onlinebackup.connected.com IBackup http://ibackup.com Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com The method you should use to copy your files will depend on the nature of the problem that is affecting your computer: If Windows is running normally, either use a backup program or simply drag and drop the folders and files that you want to copy from one drive to another. You can also transfer files from one computer to another through your network. If Windows is not running normally, try starting the computer in Safe Mode (see article 1 for instructions). When Safe Mode runs, drag and drop the folders and files you want to copy. If Windows won’t run at all, use a file recovery program such as Get- DataBack to copy the files. See article 15 for more about using GetDataBack. NOTE If the original problem was caused by a virus or spyware program, it’s possible that copying program and configuration files will transfer the infection to the destination drive or computer. Rather than copying everything on the old drive, select text and data files only. Don’t copy any files whose names end with .exe, .com, or .dll. Immediately after you copy the files, run up-to-date virus and spyware scans on the computer that contains the copied files. If your computer will load Windows, you can use the Files And Settings Transfer Wizard to copy the configuration settings from your existing Windows setup, including Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, the desktop, and the display settings. After you install a new drive, use the Transfer Wizard to quickly configure the system to the same settings you were using before the original problem occurred. Follow these steps to run the Files And Settings Transfer Wizard: 1. From the Start menu, open All Programs (or Programs in the Classic menu) Accessories System Tools Files And Settings Transfer Wizard. 2. Click Next to move to the Which Computer Is This? window shown in. 3. Choose the Old Computer option, and then click Next. After the wizard processes your request, it will display the Select A Transfer Method window. 4. Choose the media or network destination where you want to store the backup information. Click Next to move on to the next window. 5. The What Do You Want To Save? window offers the choice of saving set- tings only, files only, or both. If you choose the Custom option, you can choose the specific settings, folders, and file types that you want the wiz- ard to save. To save space on your backup media, consider removing file types you don’t need from the list. If you have already backed up your data files, you can remove all of the file types and just save the Settings and Folders. 6. Click Next to collect and copy the files and settings you want to save. When you are ready to restore the settings, run the wizard again and choose the New Computer option in the Which Computer Is This? screen. You will also want a written copy of the computer’s network settings. Follow these steps to find these settings: 1. From the Windows XP Start menu, choose Connect To Show All Connections and select Local Area Connection; if you use the Classic menu, choose Start Settings Network Connections Local Area Connection. 2. When the Status window appears, choose the Support tab. 3. Note all four of the Connection Status settings: Address Type, IP Address, Subnet Mask, and Default Gateway. 4. Click Details. The Network Connection Details window shown in will appear. 5. Add the addresses of the DHCP server and the DNS Servers to the list you made in Step 3. |
legal disclaimer
Our website is not responsible for the information contained by this article. Web-articles is a free articles resource.
Suggestion: If you need fresh, daily updated content for your website, feel free to use our service. Click here for more information.
related articles
External attacks on your computer come in many forms: viruses, worms, spyware, and Trojan horses are just a few of the mostcommon types. This malware, or malicious soft- ware, presents threats to your computer’s operation, the security of your data, your privacy, and your identity. If your computer is doing something strange for no apparent reason, a virus or spyware program could be to blame. Sometimes, though, there are no visible signs. For example, a virus could quietly fill up your hard drive with garbage data, or spywar...
Stopping Break-ins: Firewalls It may seem like an odd form of entertainment, but there’s a whole sub- culture out there of people who spend their time trying to break into other people’s computers. Some of these people are just in it for the game, but others are cracking into computers as a way to steal personal and corporate information. As anyone who has ever had to deal with identity theft can tell you, taking back control of your life after someone has stolen your credit card numbers, co...
3. Internet connection and Windows XP
The Internet has become such an essential part of most people’s experience that it’s sometimes difficult to know where your own computer stops and the Internet begins. For most of us, it doesn’t matter if a particular resource is physically located on a local hard drive (one inside your PC or a network server) or a computer halfway around the world. Either way, it’s just a matter of keystrokes and mouse clicks to view it on the screen or listen to it through speakers plugged into your computer. ...
4. How to setup a local network in Windows XP
LOCAL NETWORK PROBLEMS Any time two or more computers and their related devices are under the same roof, they should probably connect to one another through a etwork. Networking allows users to share files and printers and to share access to the Internet through a common modem or broadband connection. Windows XP includes tools and wizards that make it relatively simple to set up a network, but a network is always more complicated than an isolated, stand-alone computer. Network problems don’t oft...
5. Windows XP activation and hardware problems
Not every computer failure is caused by a software issue. Many problems that appear to be related to Windows are actually caused by some kind of hardware malfunction or by a conflict between two or more incompatible hardware components inside the computer. This article describes many of the most common problems that you might encounter when you try to add, move, or change a component inside your computer. Most of these problems have relatively easy solutions if you know where to look. Finding and fixing hardware problems requ...
6. Installing a New Hard Drive on Windows XP Professional
Hard drives are a special case. On a cost- per-bit basis, drives are cheap and getting cheaper all the time. When a drive fails, the cost of replacing the physical device is relatively small, but the data stored on the old drive is often irreplaceable. So you shouldn’t throw away an apparently broken drive until you have done everything possible to recover the data, and you shouldn’t do anything to the drive that might erase or damage any more data. When your boot drive (almost always the C: dri...
7. How to recover data from a corrupted hard drive using Windows XP Pro
Recovering Your Data Unless the physical platters inside the drive are severely damaged, it’s probably possible to recover the data from a bad drive. In extreme cases, you might need to send the drive to a very expensive recovery service that will take the drive apart in a clean room environment and replace the damaged parts, but it can be done. Before you spend that money, try the techniques in this section to read your files with special recovery software. The most important thing to ...