my story about aol

[Henyman]

u've all been askin me were i've been the last week as i ain't been makin me usal aperience so here goes.........

basically last wedness day i woz on here (as usal) when aol crashed + wouldn't start up again i did a virus scan + found a trogan horse called swporta.trogan. i followed nav instruction's + jus deleted, it didn't manage 2 spread. any way several ininstalls of aol l8er it still didn't work, every time i opened aol it said "installin network adapter files plaese wait" + wouldn't conect properly untill the 3rd dial up when it conected so i could only read email's.

thursday i rang aol for most of the day trying various "fixes". in the end they decided 2 ignore there computer screen's + get some cleaver bloke 2 ring me. i had 2 make an apointment for sunday @ earliest i said sod it + made the apointment.

sunday mornin the bloke rang + did some more trouble shooting. he evently said it was the computer + the wan network drivers + 2 reinstall window's.

monday i rang argos (were i got my computer from) they gave me a number 4 HP, which i rang, who gave me a premium rate 60p a min line 2 ring.

i said bugger that + rang argos agon who put me through 2 some outher pc company. the bloke there said wan adapter's had nothing 2 do wid aol conectin 2 the internet + that it woz crap.

tuesday i tried a non destructive system recovery which reinstalls all xp component's (suposedly) whole keepin all user info etc.

it didn't make any diference so i backed up all data + did a destructive install (clean's harddrive + installs all computer defalt program's like new from factory)

it worked!!!!!!!

i'm now in the process of downloadin all updates + fixes from windows update + nav as well as installin all software again.

so who woz write? wos it aol or the computer?

freak ocurence or conected?

well thats's me story + i'm bk so u can all read it + laugh @ my misfortune

one small edit for language, xsivforce

 

[Henyman]

*bump*

ow yeah how long does it take 2 download 60mb of window's updates? specially on a 56k modem guess i better get goin...

 

[Iceman]

The above horror story is the exact reason why I love Drive Image, when your computer is running sweet and no probs, use Drive Image (or another similar program), and make a exact image of the hard drive on CD's. You run into a probelm, reformat and reinstall everything like it was before, in about 1 hour (maybe a little more, depending on the size and speed of your computer).

You won't have to activate XP, update the drivers, reinstall your favorite programs, etc.

just my opinion

 

[Dick Johnson]

Drive Image

Iceman: I totally agree with your Drive Image backup. I don't do this to CD's (takes too long), but I backup to a spare scsi hard drive that sits on the shelf for this kind of situation. Takes 5 minutes to replace and boot to a perfect operating system. When not busy, I just update this spare drive when I've made any changes to the operating system. Best backup I've ever found!

 

[koko]

never used it before, but doesn't norton ghost take an image of your hdd also?

anyone ever used ghost to back up a system?

 

[Bob S]

Have to agree with Iceman. I've said it before. Only difference is that I use Ghost. Just this week-end, my W2000 Pro started giving me a fatal error after I did a Microsoft download. Microsoft site said it was a hardware problem(ram or video). Untrue, as my XP drive was fine. I just booted to Ghost on my backup drive and 15 minutes later...all was fine.

Bottom line, an exact image is the only way to go for a back-up. If you do it on an old harddrive it is very fast, if not then use CDR.

 

[Iceman]

whether u use Ghost or Drive Image is not that important, what is important is that you use at least one of them. Both of them do the same thing, make a exact copy image of your hard drive.

The reason I suggested make the backup to CDR, is because most people only have one hard drive. Of course if you have two hard drives or an extra one, backup the image to that instead, will go a lot faster like Bob S said. But I would still also make a backup image to CDR, just in case you ever needed it.

 

[dadx2mj]

Not sure about Drive Image but with Ghost if you only have one HDD but have it partitioned into two drives you can back up your OS partition to the second partition on the same HDD. I used to do this when I only had one HDD and it saved my butt many times. Now I have two HDD's and use the second one for storing my Ghost images and MP3's

 

[Henyman]

wot program's can i use 2 make a "ghost"?, wot does it do exactly? (i get the basic idea) + how do i download updates so i can burn them 2 c.d?

 

[Bob S]

You can buy Ghost through Symantec. Make sure you get version 2002 or higher or it will not work with XP. You basically create a boot disk that boots to Ghost, with or without CDR access and then follow the instructions.

Note: I would not "ghost" to a second partition, since one of the reasons you are creating an image is to recover from a hard drive crash. if you only have one hard drive your image will be lost along with the original.

 

[damnyank]

I followed the ICEMAN's advise and got myself DriveImage 2002 - got my harddrive imaged to cdr's and am ready (hopefully) for whatever!

No I did not image to another partition yet - as I have not been convinced that is the way to go! If the harddrive crashes and you ain't got the cd backup - what's the sense???

Just wish I knew more about "virtual discs". From what I am hearing this is the way to go rather than adding partitons to a "single" harddrive.

Any commments???

 

[Iceman]

Yes I agree with you, putting an exact copy of a partition on another partition on the same Hard Drive makes no sense to me at all, if that hard drive crashes (and they do), and you only have the image on the hard drive, it's gone. Putting it on a different Hard Drive is a different matter.

I have two 40 gig IBM hard drives, one is the main hard drive, the other is just for mp3's and vids, and a Image copy of the first one, makes more sense to me that way. If the first one goes down, I'm covered with both the other hard drive and the CDR's.

I'm paranoid, I know, but I hate reinstalling everything, waste of computer time.

 

[damnyank]

HeyIceman - I've just got one question - how often do I have to image to cdr??? It took me 15 cdr's last time and that gets expensive - but I do not trust cd'RWs!!!

Any suggestions???

 

[Iceman]

What I do, is make a backup Image once a month, but I backup new stuff, like files and such on CDRW once a week, usually sunday night, but only new stuff, that way I only lose a couple days at most. does this make sense? I might have to reinstall a new program I just got, but that's no big deal really.

as far as expensive CDR are pretty cheap, 15 CDR for me would only cost maybe 4 or 5 bucks, nothing compared to a day reinstalling XP and everything from the start, plus downloading all those updates.

just my opinion

 

[damnyank]

Kool - I just have to find cheaper cd's!

 

[Henyman]

try this link damnyank

cheap cdr's

it work's out @ 12.98 British pounds sterling = 20.48 US dollars.

50cdr's/20.48=2.44140625 each. umm i'm no good with $ so it's $2.5 a c.d?

anyway by english standard's there dirt cheap.

 

[Henyman]

no..wait that can't b rite umm let's jus say there cheap...

 

[mafiafromrussia]

cdrs are really cheap here at US. i got 2 50pack spindles for free last month. actually the way it works is iget each of them for $15 US, then i just get a rebate from a company in a couple month. so in the end my cds are free. and my friend got a box with 200 cdrs for like $15 US. and cd are good and not some junk.

 

[Iceman]

Originally posted by henyman
try this link damnyank

cheap cdr's

it work's out @ 12.98 British pounds sterling = 20.48 US dollars.

50cdr's/20.48=2.44140625 each. umm i'm no good with $ so it's $2.5 a c.d?

anyway by english standard's there dirt cheap.

close, u just had the two switched its all.

it's 20.48/50 = 0.4096 or in english, about 41 cents a piece.

so 41 cents a peice times the 15 CDR is $6.15 pretty close to what I said.

Actually in the US we get 50 CDR for around 15 bucks, so the figure is about $4.50 like I said.

enough math lesson today.

 

[damnyank]

Thanks Iceman,mafiafromrussia, & henyman

In the past I've bought the Vebatim datalife plus colors (80min/700MB)for recording mp3s. These come with slim cases - 50 for $22.95 (plus tax of $1.60) at SAMS or a tad over 49 cents each. I thought I had paid more than that - but I guess not.

So I can now buy the spindles of 50 discs at the cheaper price ($15) as I will already have cases for them from the cdr's I will be replacing. Any name brands you would suggest??