Windows XP Installations
by Pierre Boisvenue. 24/05/2007 1:58:34 PM
I figure that during my career since DOS and from Windows 3.1 to windows Vista that I have spent close to three months of my lifetime of just installing Microsoft operating systems. Now this just an estimate on my part and has no scientific basis. For example, I currently run windows XP service pack 2, a router firewall and trend micro system yet still managed to get hacked once in a while. The other day I noticed that my HP PC had lost connection to the internet so I figure the usual reboot on the cable modem would do the trick but no. Then I figure I would reboot the router and that fixed the problem. Having to reboot the router is very unusual for me and did not think about it until I realize something more happened to my XP installation and that there could have been a link. The problem I was experiencing in XP was the unusual Visual Studio 2005 runtime error so I figure than maybe just a XP reboot would solve the problem.
Then I noticed something I have never seen before, after the reboot, I could no longer login my system XP kept saying Login immediately followed by login off and saving settings. Now I could no longer rely on the XP system restore feature since I could no longer log on and using SAFE mode did nothing for me. This is when I knew that I would have to reinstall XP along with the myriad of download of service packs and reinstallation of a lot of software. Total time estimation of 12 hours straight. Since I have the first version of XP that includes downloading first a bunch of services packs followed by the warning to download and install service pack 2 followed more service pack for windows XP and office XP.
Then I said to myself that I could no longer rely of the windows XP system restore feature when things go wrong and needed a good backup solution and one that did no rely on the operating system since that is what I need to restore in case of problems. So forget about nice user interface with fancy windows and icons to do the job. This is when I found out about Image for DOS. It can be made to boot from a floppy disk or a bootable CD. This mean a low level backup sector by sector that can be saved on another partition, disk or external USB devices.
So the moral of the story is that it is best to have your hard drive partitioned according to it’s purpose which means one partition for the operating system (OS) and one for DATA. The operating can then be saved separately if thing should go wrong and saved and restore with a tool that is OS independent and another for DATA than can be OS dependent with a nice user interface UI.
Western Digital now make an external USB hard drive called My Book up to 1 Tera Bytes in size. Now I’m saying to myself the temptation to use it has a storage device negates it’s purpose has a backup device. Another point to remember is that using an OS dependent backup application will be a good solution has long that moving to another OS will not affect the capability to restore DATA across OS. As far as I know my current DATA backup solution should be compatible between XP SP2 and windows Vista.
My main concern now is with the capability of Image For DOS to work with My Book via USB. The specs says that it is supported but I have yet to confirm.
XP, SP2
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