Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (
More info?)
Denise wrote:
> Help, I have lost all of the original software copies for my Dell computer.
> Is there anyway to back up Windows XP Home, Microsoft Office 2003 ect ? I
> also have other software that came loaded on the computer is there anyway to
> back those up? I have searched my house and cannot find the discs. Any advice
> will be greatly appreciated.
> Denise
If you mean is there a way to extract programs and the OS from the
current installation so it can be reinstalled as if you had the original
media, then no. It is possible, however, to backup your system as it is
so you have it in case something goes wrong. One should always have a
complete backup, data loss is a matter of when not if.
There are several approaches for backup. One is to use an imaging
program. This makes an exact image of the drive or partition(s) which
can be saved on CD/DVD or to another drive - internal or external.
Restores can be done of the entire partition or individual files /
folders. These work well and make it easy to recover from a drive crash.
I recommend storing the images on an external drive or CD/DVD rather
than an internal drive. Examples of this type of program are:
Norton Ghost 9.0
Acronis True Image
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows
Terabyte Unlimited's BootItNg
The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's
Backup My PC. This is an excellent tool. It is the evolution of
ntbackup. There are other good backup programs out there as well. This
can do a complete backup or backup individual files and folders to
DVD/CD and other drives.
Another choice is ntbackup which is installed by default in XP Pro but
not Home [note some OEMs do not install ntbackup even on the Pro
version]. If it's not installed check the XP installation CD in the
\MSFT\ValueADD\Ntbackup folder as ntbackup.msi or download it from here:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm#backup_home
Ntbackup cannot backup to DVD and will only backup to CD if other 3rd
party CD burning software is available and even with that it will not
span CDs, i.e. one CD is the limit, which is not very practical. It is
geared toward tape drives or other hard drives. It will work ok in
backing up to an external hard drive (or network drive) and restoring
individual files / folders is ok, but if you need to restore the
complete drive it's cumbersome. XP must be installed first. If you
have XP Pro, Ntbackup has an ASR feature (Automated System Recovery)
which makes this restore of a boot/system drive easier but still it
takes much longer than an imaging program, and I never got it to restore
my system to full functionality as it was when the backup was made. It
also mandates that a floppy drive be available. One floppy disk is
created in the ASR process and there is no way around that. ASR is not
available on XP Home addition.
--
Rock
MS MVP Windows - Shell/User