Sun Nov-09-2003
A couple of weekends ago, I loaded Windows XP Professional onto a library desktop machine. It must have been an older version, because it took over 12 hours to download and install all the relevant patches that Microsoft has created for this version of Windows. Windows has an annoying habit of requiring you to boot your machine after an installation, so that it can update the registry. On a computer that runs at less than 1 Ghz, this can take three or four minutes.
At any rate, I came across a discussion of Restore Points, which XP sets up every time you shut down, unless you instruct it otherwise. The idea is to be able to restore XP to an earlier (working) version of XP after you've run into trouble. The only problem is, each Restore Point takes an enormous amount of disk space. The opinion of many XP experts is that having Restore Points turned on is not all that useful, and that a better way is to purchase a program that writes a disk image of your drive and⁄or data onto a CD.
An image of a drive, usually compressed to save space, and typically stored on one or more CDs, is the easiest way to restore a non-working Windows machine. The best discussion of all aspects of backing up and restoring a system is probably by Fred Langa at Information Week . Most of the drive imaging programs are not freeware, and range from about $40.00 and up. An exception is ImageMaker, but the problem with it is that unlike most others, it doesn't compress the image. That can create a considerable requirement for disk space on a second drive or partition.