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Have you ever crashed you machine and wished you could go back to a fresh system without having to go through all the trouble of formatting and installing everything AGAIN ?
I have learned not to trust system restore it's never works right.
Well this is how I do it. And once it's set up it only takes me about an hour to be back up to par. without having to go through hours upon hours of updates and reboots associated with yet another format and reload of the operating system ,drivers, yadda yadda...
I know to some this may sound complicated , but really it isn't.
This setup consist of using two identical drives set as master & slave on the same IDE. I like 80 gig drives for the os drives for no particular reason they just seem to work well for me.
Make your boot sequence in the BIOS.
Since most of the new OS stuff will run from a CD usually tag it first.
HDD 0 will be the master it goes second in line. Disable the rest it will boot faster if it's not looking for hardware.
Starting off we need a fresh format and install of XP. Do It Offline! Don't worry about activation you can do that later just be offline for the install, Unhook the cable! Starting with anything but is asking for trouble.
Once the OS is installed. I go through the process of installing all the drivers motherboard, sound ,video, ect and rebooting on each one.
Then I install my virus protection. Then is when I connect to the network and download all the virus updates. after the update and a reboot I check the virus updates again and see if theres anything it may have missed. if it does another update I reboot and continue with the updates until it says you're up to date, from a reboot. Now activate Windows I know that little "Nag Balloon" has been bugging the heck out of ya.
Now is when I grab and install the latest Service Pack. I use to be hesitant about this back in the day but they seem to have XP wrapped up pretty tight now and it seems to be stable on the machines I work on. While you're at the Microsnot website get anything else you may need. remember the less fat crap it has the better it'll run.
Now that you have a fresh platform to build on start installing your common programs you use. Photo Shop , DVD ripper Burning Program. whatever ..
Less Fat = More Speed. Now Unhook the network. *Very Important* The only time the master drive should be online is to update the virus protection, nothing else, don't web surf it's not there to collect cookies.
This is your Master Drive and once done you should rarely have to come back to it because were going to clone it to the Slave drive with Acronis True Image
I rarely ever endorse a product but Acronis is the berries. Do not try it with Norton Ghost I have had some mixed results with it. Acronis has worked flawlessly every time I've used it. http://www.acronis.com
Cloning the drive is easy. open Acronis True Image. top left click Operations, scroll down and select Clone Disk
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Follow the wizard and click next.set clone mode to automatic.
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Click next.
This screen ask for a source drive of course we are on the Master Drive. highlight the master drive by clicking it then click next.
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The next screen ask for a destination drive. highlight the Slave Drive and click next.
Choose the delete partitions and click next.
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let Acronis do it's work and reboot it when it ask. once the clone drive is finished and you can reboot without Acronis wanting to do anything :D shut down the computer and reboot into the BIOS and reset the boot sequence to cd being first inline and change HDD 0 to HDD 1 for the second drive and reboot.
You are now running on the cloned drive. Go into disk management and check to see if the Master Drive (the original we started with), has a drive letter assigned to it.
If it does right click the drive and select change drive letters and paths. highlight the drive letter of the master drive and remove it. now you have a secure Master with a fresh install and nothing can access it or write to it. it will always be there fresh and ready next time you have a problem. Just change the boot sequence in the bios back to HDD 0 if you need it. You may be able to access your crashed /buggy drive and save your mail and documents. but save them to a separate drive or disk just don't pull anything from the crashed drive to the Master Drive. If you were lucky enough to save anything just clone the master again to the slave, change the boot sequence back to the HDD 1 and you're back. remember to remove the master's drive letter once you get the clone running again.
Once you have a Master set and get familiar with the process a System restore takes only an hour or so. Much less than the time it would take you to download and install all those updates & reboots.
Well Just let me say that This has been an incredible waste of time.
I enjoyed it very much Thank You :D
Cheers http://www.***boat.com/image_center/...20/1127311.gif
T.
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Disk 3..... AKA... T's porn storage.
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That's a nice tutorial.
Thanks Man! :)
Unfortunately setting up customers machines that way has cost me a little on repairs.
On the other hand it probably makes for some good word of mouth advertisement for future new customers.
T.
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Disk 3..... AKA... T's porn storage.
:D Shhhhhhh.
T.
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?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????:)
Steve
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I just figured out how to delete porn,you mean theres other thing to learn?
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I just figured out how to delete porn,you mean theres other thing to learn?
Yes Young Grasshoppah , There is much to learn. :D
T.
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Yes Young Grasshoppah , There is much to learn. :D
T.
locks up,i will call you.I will pay EXTRA to keep everything a secret:D
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Been running the same setup on my computer for 5 years now, thanks to Windows 2000.
Keep updating motherboards with VIA controller chipsets, and the drivers keep loading the system, letting me update all the drivers.
You can keep XP, and I won't even let Vista in my yard.
Wife's computer runs quite hapilly on Win2K as well, for years at a time. :D
Most of these windows "upgrades" are steps backwards.
I have seen 5 BSOD's since I left Win98SE (all 5 of them on my XP laptop). :idea:
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Been running the same setup on my computer for 5 years now, thanks to Windows 2000.
Keep updating motherboards with VIA controller chipsets, and the drivers keep loading the system, letting me update all the drivers.
You can keep XP, and I won't even let Vista in my yard.
Wife's computer runs quite hapilly on Win2K as well, for years at a time. :D
Most of these windows "upgrades" are steps backwards.
I have seen 5 BSOD's since I left Win98SE (all 5 of them on my XP laptop). :idea:
I agree Win2k rocks. I have the Developers edition given to me by one of Microsoft's finest. Although it's been a while since I've used it I prefer it over all the other MS. OSs. I don't like the service packs for 2k they seem to be buggy on some machines SP4 seems stable on alot of machines but not enough to warrant installation for my needs. Not to mention the damn thing is nearly 150 meg compressed.
The main reason I keep an XP machine running is for support for other people It's hard to recall something off the top of my head since I'm getting , umm old. I really need to set up an old Fat machine and brush up on those skills. I can't count the times I've been asked to help with a problem on 98 lately.
And I refuse to let people run ME.
A funny story about ME and how it got it's name goes kinda like this.
Back when Microsoft was in the development stages of ME (Millennium Edition) It was suppose to be a Multimedia Enhanced version of 98. thus was going to be named Multimedia Edition. Well as development came to a close they discovered it didn't do Multi Media worth a shit !
So they decided to rename it Millennium Edition. At least that's the story I was given :D
I haven't gotten into Vista yet but I know it's one of those things I will have to do eventually just so I can help other people out with it. So far I haven't had much demand for help with it but I know it's coming, so the sooner I do it the better but not on the machine I use regularly.
Have a Great Evening.
T.
