Or

A Cautionary Tale With a Happy Ending when You Don’t Backup Regularly

The real point of this post is that to not backup your essential and important personal data is often likely to end in disappointment and loss of perhaps your most precious memories in the form of photos and documents. This is one instance where the bullet was dodged.

So What Happened?

I spent this UK bank holiday weekend with my daughter, granddaughter and new grandson. As usual I was asked to do a few DIY jobs and to sort out a couple of things on her computer:)

It all started with trying to fix a simple wireless networking connection issue. The main problem she was having with her PC was connecting the wireless router and had resorted to trailing wires across the living room to connect the router by the network cable. At least this gave the necessary access to the router and to the Internet if needed. Sorting out the router was basically down to setting the router name and password using the web based settings utility rather than the provide GUI based utility on the broadband providers setup CD. Not that the CD utility didn’t work but it was just more difficult than using the web based setup screens. A triumph of creating complication when trying to simplify things for a less knowledgeable user. Reference was made to the web based utility at the end of the instruction book “For Mac Users” so the average windows user would never realise it was there.

So setting up the user access to the router and connecting to the PC all went relatively easily. We had been out earlier that day and my daughter decided to transfer the pictures she had taken to her PC. Apparently at some point this froze and she turned the PC off with the power button. If only she had said something to me first! We could have at least looked at the options of invoking the task manager with Ctl-Alt-Del before going for the doomsday solution. As to whether anything done in setting up the wireless router caused the crash I don’t know, my personal feeling is that so many things get changed by installation of programs, windows updates, etc. that any OS is often only one or two changes away from “meltdown”

Disaster

The first thing I knew about it was when my daughter asked me what was happening! XP and gone into the automatic hard drive checking routine and at the point when I looked it was busily changing the “security descriptor” on every file chunk on the system. When it eventually finished and rebooted things looked OK but there was no network connection. Going into Network Settings would start the wizard but go no further than the first page. Everything I tried indicated that some critical system files had gone.

OK, try another reboot and see if that will help, but it doesn’t, so now what to do?

Well the options are:

• Last Known Good Configuration
• Load a Restore Point
• Load a Recent Backup
• Repair Using the Management Console
• Repair Using Installation CD

1. Last Known Good Configuration

This was a non-starter having booted the system once since the point of failure meant that the last “Good” configuration was already failing. In my experience this option only ever works for “catastrophic” registry corruption, where the PC won’t boot into the OS at all.

2. Load a Restore Point

Whatever had been corrupted this included access to the system restore interface. Checking System Restore was set up through System Properties showed that it was set up but I just couldn’t get at it.

3. Load a Recent Backup

The most recent backup was nearly a year ago when I transferred all of the data from an old computer to the new one. Not only that but it was physically 200 miles away at my home on an external hard drive. Therefore not an option. (I despair that even my own daughter doesn’t backup properly despite the warnings I have given).

4. Repair Using the Management Console

(By using the OS Install Disk and selecting this option). I have only ever used this to repair some small problems where it was obvious what needed doing. This solution would probably only be an option for someone with a lot of knowledge and even more time.

5. Repair Using Installation CD

I have tried this before without success and usually ended up just installing a new version of the OS to a different system folder. Then trying to rescue the data from the various locations Windows and software developers choose to use.

However this was the only alternative I now had. Luckily I had bought my laptop and an external hard drive with me so the first thing I did was transfer all the important data to the external drive. This backup data was relatively small in size and not widely spread across different directories. It consisted of digital photos, documents and Outlook files.

Warning

Don’t try this method of recovery without backing up ALL your important files. If you can’t access them take a snapshot of the hard drive using a suitable freeware utility such as:

DriveImage XML

HD Clone

So What Do You Need?

A Windows XP Installation CD and your original license key>

Place the CD in the your drive.

Make sure the BIOS is set to boot from the CD/DVD Drive

(Press F2 or the Del key as the PC starts to enter the BIOS – if you don’t know which try pressing each alternately a few times as the PC starts)

Find the screen which sets the boot sequence and make the first boot device the CD/DVD drive. Save the settings and restart the computer.

You will be asked to “Press Any Key” to boot from the CD drive. So press any key

The details are given by Microsoft here:

Perform a Repair Installation

There is also an excellent article by Michael Stevens here, which has a lot more information and warnings regarding backups and possible risks:

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install

The Outcome

Well I went through a straight forward “Repair Install” without problems. This took about 45 minutes but the time depends on hardware, etc. At the final reboot the system started and as far as I could check everything was working as before. All the new settings for the wireless network were intact and none of the important documents had been lost.

All in all I consider this a very luck escape and would recommend to everyone to make proper and regular backups of all essential data as a minimum and the entire OS preferably.

Other Relevant Posts:

Recuva – Easy and Quick Way to Recover Deleted Photos and Files

Backup – Identify Where the Data Is – Find the Location of Your Information on a Windows Based PC?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Hints & Tips, Windows OS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.