Re-store, Re-pair, Re-cover or Re-install

[-pops-]

Many members here will know that I'm always going on about having a backup of your computer system well, here's what happened to me this week.

About Tuesday, one of my machines seemed to be running more slowly than usual. Wednesday it seemed worse but, I kept plodding on hoping it would cure itself. It didn't so on Thursday I decided to do a System Restore to a time I knew it was working OK. I chose a date to restore to and it just sat there doing nothing. Tried an earlier date - same thing - nothing.

Oh well, next line of attack. I cleared out all the rubbish, defragmented - all the things one does to clean up. No change.

I rebooted and was greeted with the message that such and such couldn't start because MFC42.dll was missing. I used another machine, went on Google and found a copy of the missing item which I then installed. Rebooted. This time some other program couldn't start because MFC42u.dll was missing. Searched out that and installed. This went on with other dll's. By now I was getting quite irritated.

Shut down and left it for a while.

Started up again and was greeted with the DOS type message "Disk error. No operating system found. Press Ctrl, Alt, Del to continue". I did as instructed and the whole thing looped.

This had taken more than a day. I decided enough was enough and to re-install from my Acronis backup. Set it going and the whole system was up and running, good as new, within 15 minutes with little or no extra input from me.

Why on earth didn't I follow my own recommendations to others and, instead of wasting so much time, effort and frustration in trying to get an obviously irreparable O/S going again, just restore from backup at the first signs of a problem?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry: :angry:

Moral: Keep an up to date backup and don't rely on System Restore to keep you safe - it doesn't.

[expertec]

After andsome's recent adventure, I wouldn't trust system restore at all! :blink:

[D4\/!d]

  re-install from my Acronis backup.

Hello pops, so if your pc is dead how can you use an Acronis backup to restore things back to normal. I have Acronis and take regular backups (about every 10 days). I keep the backups on an ext hard disk drive. From time to time, I have restored but this is while the pc is working. For example perhaps I've just done something silly. It always works well.

However, I cannot understand how you can use a backup if the pc is not booting into Windows (XP Pro SP2) in the first place. :blink:

[-pops-]

D4\/!d

You make an Acronis recovery disk.

When your machine goes base over apex (as mine did) you put the recovery disk in the drive and, provided "boot from CD" is part of your startup sequence, the recovery disk will start up, find your backup files and restore your operating system good as new - all in a few minutes.

If "boot from CD" is not part of your boot sequence, all you have to do is go into the BIOS and change the boot order. You can change back afterwards if you want to.

I keep "boot from CD" as first choice in my machines with HDD as next in line.

Making the boot disk or recovery disk is one of the first things that Acronis (and, I seem to remember DriveImage) tells you to do when installing the program.

[r4may]

I agree Pops a backup is essential.

I backup using Norton Ghost:-

Once a week I back up to my second seperate HDD and once a month to a set of CD's. Have a Norton BOOT disk so I never can loose more tha a Day or so's data.

I have not yet found a Backup program that will do a full / Incremental backup in the manner that the Vax/Alpha's did under VMS though.

Oh for a proper VMS on a PC :) :)

Edit :comment added

[AlanHo]

Following your advice on this Forum I bought a copy Acronis 2 weeks ago, made a recovery disc and took an image of my C drive onto my Maxtor One Touch external hard drive.

This file called itself True Image.tib and is 8.4 Gb in size

The following week I took another image - this time clicking on "incremental" or whatever it says and it produced a separate file named True Image 2.tib. Size 46 Mb

Today I have done another image and this one is named True Image 3.tib. Size 2.6 Gb.

The current size of the files on my C: drive is 25.6 Gb so it appears that Acronis applies some serious compression even though I only asked for the "regular" kind.

I have not dared to try a restore because I don't feel that I know enough about how the programme works and what the reference to temporary logical drives is all about. I know how to boot from the CD using the Acronis emergency disc but am not sure what sort of minefield follows.

If I needed to restore my C: drive - would I first restore from the file taken two weeks ago and then restore the subsequent files one after the other - or would I use the latest file and Acronis itself would chase back to the previous files. Is it simply a matter of clicking on the Restore icon in Acronis - selecting the relevant file on the external drive and then clicking on "Next" etc - or are there any other steps required.

[-pops-]

Alan, don't worry about which to restore from. Acronis "holds your hand" all the way when it's doing its stuff.

[micken]

I have not yet found a Backup program that will do a full / Incremental backup in the manner that the Vax/Alpha's did under VMS though.

I've just done a full restore of my C drive from Norton Ghost 9.0 using the recovery CD to boot from. This was from an incremental backup on Thursday night. The process took less than 10 minutes from booting into the BIOS to having XP Pro up and running.

I'd be interested to know what other facilities VMS offers since I'm unfamiliar with it.

[r4may]

I've just done a full restore of my C drive from Norton Ghost 9.0 using the recovery CD to boot from. This was from an incremental backup on Thursday night. The process took less than 10 minutes from booting into the BIOS to having XP Pro up and running

I use Norton Ghost 2003 and it does not appear to support Incremental Backup, or at least I have'nt found out how to do it yet.

I'd be interested to know what other facilities VMS offers since I'm unfamiliar with it.

VMS is the main O/S for the Digital Vax/Alpha range of mini's and does not rum on a PC as far as I am aware. The backup/restore facility had so many options as to how, whereand what format etc to do the backup that it would take several pages to list them as did the instuction manual/help files.

[micken]

Thanks for clarification r4may. I upgraded from Ghost 2003 and I find the ability to work in Windows and shedule backups a real bonus. Ive done the following, which might give you a bit of an inbsight.

Set up

-a full backup of my system and programme drives once per month with a maximum of 6,

- incremental weekly backups of the same drives with a maximum of 4, incremented on a daily basis.

This way I can restore to a day within the last month and I've also got information from the last six months. I've found that all I need to do is extract my Outlook, Office and Browser Favourites from my most recent backup and put them into the system drive when I'm up and running.

Worth looking into? ;)

[D4\/!d]

D4\/!d

You make an Acronis recovery disk.

Thanks pops, I'm off to make one now...

[scuzzman]

After andsome's recent adventure, I wouldn't trust system restore at all! :blink:

Funny - I've been telling people not to use it since WinMe, and continued (and continue still) to tell people not to use it in XP...

[artist]

After andsome's recent adventure, I wouldn't trust system restore at all! :blink:

Funny - I've been telling people not to use it since WinMe, and continued (and continue still) to tell people not to use it in XP...

I suppose it depends on what the problem is - I have found it very useful....... :)

[AlanHo]

I had a bit of a hiccup on my laptop a couple of days ago - used restore to go back a week and hey presto - all is fine.

I have never had cause to complain about XP restore - however I previously had Windows ME and that was quite a different matter.

[-pops-]

XP System Restore has let me down twice now. Once last week (as above) and once when I was beta testing what became XP. As has been said, Win ME System restore was pretty near useless and this alerted me to the potential for failure of the XP version.

Having said that, I have used the facility in XP a number of times with success but, I would NEVER rely on it.

[micken]

I had similar issues with Norton GoBack, sometimes fine, other times not. Reviews on it seem to be varied too. I don't use it on my main machine and I'm now convinced that the best system to rely on is using dedicated software to make regular, and managed backups.

I would go as far as testing restoration of backups before I needed to do it for real and for the first time.

[r4may]

Thanks for clarification r4may. I upgraded from Ghost 2003 and I find the ability to work in Windows and shedule backups a real bonus. Ive done the following, which might give you a bit of an inbsight.

Set up

-a full backup of my system and programme drives once per month with a maximum of 6,

- incremental weekly backups of the same drives with a maximum of 4, incremented on a daily basis.

This way I can restore to a day within the last month and I've also got information from the last six months. I've found that all I need to do is extract my Outlook, Office and Browser Favourites from my most recent backup and put them into the system drive when I'm up and running.

Worth looking into?  ;)

Thanks for the info may give it a go

[deuces wild]

Thanks for the reminder Pops.