Back Up Disc

[lucille]

A friend has just bought a new Dell computer with Vista Pro operating system. He asked me if I could do a back up copy of the cd supplied by Dell. I put it in my DVD drive, and I've lost everything. I was running XP Pro. I have everything (or had) on this computer. Will I be able to get it back?

[RedjackRyan]

Given the amount of DRM crap within Vista i'm not surprised it ate your system. As to recovery, thats gonna be dicey...but here's a good place to start http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/so-you-overwrote-your-xp/


Good luck!

[paularoid]

Doncha just -love- those factory supplied "safety" discs? :mad: I might migrate over to XP but so far I will NOT go with Vista. Won't do it. No how, no way. Won't do it. I'll go back to DOS and Win 3.1 first. I'm considering doing that anyway if I can get away with it.

[lucille]

Thanks Paul. The worst thing is that all I did was put the Vista into my DVD drive and closed it when the phone rang. I went to answer it, and when I got back to my computer everything was gone and I had a black screen with DOS. So strictly speaking, I didn't install at all. It did that by itself apparently. I'll let you know how I get on.

[paularoid]

Thanks Paul. The worst thing is that all I did was put the Vista into my DVD drive and closed it when the phone rang. I went to answer it, and when I got back to my computer everything was gone and I had a black screen with DOS. So strictly speaking, I didn't install at all. It did that by itself apparently. I'll let you know how I get on.
And who knows what happened while you were gone to the phone? I'm -speculating- that what -may- have happened is that it flashed to a screen of choices and a countdown time in which to respond. At the end of that time a default action occurred. I'm only speculating that because that's what happens with my proprietary Compaq when it freaks out and you have to reboot. It comes up with a screen of choices, Safe Mode, Normal Boot, etc. It does a 30 second countdown and then takes the default mode of boot which happens to be Safe Mode. If you're not there to make sure you've got the right mode chosen, it automatically boots into Safe Mode and you've got to reboot all over again to get things straight. As I said, I'm speculating that may be similar to what happened with you but I couldn't say for sure because again I will NOT get into Vista. Far too may DRM issues for my desires. I don't need to be protected from myself thankyouverymuch.

Oh and by the way, my proprietary Compaq is NOT my primary machine. My primary machine is straight generic. Namebrand components but assembled by ME... WITHOUT all the nagware and crapware that you find on so many namebrand systems (like Compaq, HP, Dell, etc.)

[lucille]

My hard drive is cactus. I am told it wouldn't be Vista that caused it, however for it to fail at the same time I bung the Vista OS CD in is very sus to me. Not that I have a clue about the technicalities. The last time I backed up to CD was about a year ago. However all the operating programmes were in a CD folder, and it was lost when I shifted from Melbourne to Geelong. So I have lost about 10 years of records. Surprisingly I am coping quite well. I can remember when I used to get upset if someone recorded over a DVD :D

[Dar]

Oh Wendy that S#$&KS!!
I hope you get it sorted out!

[DaveM]

I think its about time for an organized march on Microsoft headquarters. Get your backup disks ready, folks....while Bill Gates is busy curing milaria he needs to know that "his" computers need attention RIGHT NOW!

[janisian]

I've been told by three people, all of them uber-geeks, to avoid Vista at all costs. Since it's coming on most of the new PC's, my plan is to toast the Vista OS if I have to and replace it with XP.
That being said, I've also learned the hard way that redundancy is never a bad thing where computers are concerned. I back up changes daily to a small 6 GB pen drive. Back up weekly to a large 80GB drive. Back up monthly to the 80GB drive AND a seperate second drive which then goes to her office with Pat (more than three miles away.)
John informed me that after Katrina, 65% of all businesses that lost their data were shut down forever within two years. He advises all clients to keep at least monthly backups at least 3 miles away. I'm taking all that as gospel.
I've also got important, irreplaceable stuff backed up on DAT and CD (for music/oral), CD (data), and whatever else I can find. That all sits in Iron Mountain storage complex, 20 miles from me. And John's also got all the album artwork and archived never-before-heard shows and demos on HIS storage system, too. Not to mention my business office, that has most of the same information, as well as all the contracts I've got.
The way I look at it, if ALL of those fail, it's not going to matter much what data I've kept anyhow....

Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it's a pain in the butt that on the road, I carry a 1GB that sits on my belt loop wherever I go, plus a 4 GB just in case. But my entire business life is in the computer at this point.

Just my two cents.

[Darlene]

My first computer came with Windows "Me" eek!!! I then changed to XP and it was very user friendly. I purchased a new computer last April and it had Vista on it. I liked XP better but Vista is not anywhere near, not even close to Me. My humble opinion, which is not much of an opinion at all, is that Vista is OK. But I am not an uber-geek so.........

Peace,
Darlene

[paularoid]

I've been told by three people, all of them uber-geeks, to avoid Vista at all costs. Since it's coming on most of the new PC's, my plan is to toast the Vista OS if I have to and replace it with XP.

<----- snip ----->

Yes, it's time consuming. Yes, it's a pain in the butt that on the road, I carry a 1GB that sits on my belt loop wherever I go, plus a 4 GB just in case. But my entire business life is in the computer at this point.

Just my two cents.
FYI and in case you (meaning anyone reading this) weren't aware there's a great majority of folks that are backing down to XP when faced with Vista for various reasons,.. many of which have to do with the fact that Vista is amongst other things very restrictive when it comes to DRM (digital rights management).

Also, at my last real(?) job (where I worked for someone else rather than myself) one of my main tasks was backup. We backed up daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. All the backups were then taken to an offsite storage locker once a week. We only had to use them once when some "dilrod" in Illinois that thought he knew more than he did hosed the system but that one time was enough. I was later told by my boss that for every hour the system was "down" it cost approximately $2000 and he thanked me for my assistance in that matter even though it took us three days to rebuild everything. BACKUPS! BACKUPS! BACKUPS!

On a side note, the "dilrod" lasted out the next week and then he was GONE!

[Darlene]

I told you paularoid I have no idea what idea what I am doing. I don't even know what DRM (digital rights management) is. laugh!

Peace, Darlene

[lucille]

Another problem is that during my shift from Melbourne to Geelong, the ONLY thing that is missing was all of my programme files which were all stored in a special folio. So even if I could get the hard drive data back (apparently I can and it will cost $5,000 to $10,000) I will have to buy MYOB, Office Works, etc. etc. Maybe I will just send the hard drive to the Tax Office, and let them tell me how much they owe me.:rolleyes: I should be more upset about this - why aren't I?

[MadMusician]

A few months ago, my ME computer started having problems. Couldn't connect to the internet, my burn CD drive stopped working, etc...
I purposely bought an XP machine (red sale at Best Buy) and had a hard disk failure within a month.
Bought a new machine with Vista. I actually thought it was OK compared to the problems I had with ME but when Vista acts up... forget it. It controls you. All the security and automatic updates and restores and conflicts with software.
Suddenly I found myself booting into DOS or editing the registry file. I resolved the problem yesterday morning. (Problems with the CD/DVD drive. I think I've visited every help site. I took off software, have installed all kinds of updates, and messed with everything. I surprised the machine even boots up.)

When I downloaded the digital songbooks yesterday and having problems, my first suspect was Vista but this time it was an innocent bystander. ;)

Grew up with Dos and Unix - when you controlled the machine!

[Amy in Vermont]

1. Turn off UAC (User Access Control). Its very annoying and pretty useless.

2. Turn off System Restore. Conceptually, System Restore is a good thing. In reality, it allows problems, including malware and viruses to replicate themselves after removal!

3. Make the power button on the start menu turn the computer off, not go into stand by mode. In this day and age of environmental consciouness, Micro$oft has made a big boo boo with htis one.

4. Turn off indexing. And don't install Google Desktop. Both of these suck up system resources without doing anything really useful.

I've been using Vista quite happily for several months now. It really not that bad!