G
Guest
Well....I did a foolish thing. I installed a major system upgrade without
first backing up my system. Bad, foolish man..... Perhaps one of you
knowledgable types can give me some advice. Here's what happened.
1. A few months ago I backed up my entire system using Acronis TrueImage.
2. Then about a month ago I installed the dreaded Windows XP Service Pack 2.
My computer seemed to accept this just fine, and ran at it's usual speedy
clip.
3. Two weeks ago I tried to scan something, only to find that the software
involved with the scanner was not functioning. In the process of
reinstalling that software and the accompanying drivers I came across
information that advised me to uninstall Service Pack 2 (a.k.a. SP2) before
installing this software. This I did, as well as (stupidly) installing a
number of other Windows updates at the same time. Then I re-installed SP2.
This hosed my system but good. After some struggle, I was finally able to
re-uninstall SP2, and my system was back online. But SP2 has been installed
and un-installed twice.
4. Now...Things are running slowly, taking a long time to boot up, and
recently it started giving me this error during the initial bootup process:
0251: System CMOS checksum bad - Default configuration used.
Strangest of all, my copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has
been running at wildly varying speeds, but usually the characters run around
at hyper-speed. It turns out the game sometimes thinks my system is running
at 135 mhz! Oy vey.....
But finally, here's the part where I'm hoping one of you can help me:
tomorrow, I plan to back up my system as it sits now, and then restore my
system from the most recent backup before THAT - the one made during Step 1
as noted above.
Naturally I have lots of documents and other files that I'd like to
preserve. Now I could save them off to another disk and restore the entire
backup file, and then copy these files back.
Instead......My backup software lets me select which folders and files I
want to restore, and I wonder if there aren't certain core directories and
files that I can restore that would do the trick. Perhaps just the c:\Windows
directory and the registry?
Any advice appreciated....
first backing up my system. Bad, foolish man..... Perhaps one of you
knowledgable types can give me some advice. Here's what happened.
1. A few months ago I backed up my entire system using Acronis TrueImage.
2. Then about a month ago I installed the dreaded Windows XP Service Pack 2.
My computer seemed to accept this just fine, and ran at it's usual speedy
clip.
3. Two weeks ago I tried to scan something, only to find that the software
involved with the scanner was not functioning. In the process of
reinstalling that software and the accompanying drivers I came across
information that advised me to uninstall Service Pack 2 (a.k.a. SP2) before
installing this software. This I did, as well as (stupidly) installing a
number of other Windows updates at the same time. Then I re-installed SP2.
This hosed my system but good. After some struggle, I was finally able to
re-uninstall SP2, and my system was back online. But SP2 has been installed
and un-installed twice.
4. Now...Things are running slowly, taking a long time to boot up, and
recently it started giving me this error during the initial bootup process:
0251: System CMOS checksum bad - Default configuration used.
Strangest of all, my copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic has
been running at wildly varying speeds, but usually the characters run around
at hyper-speed. It turns out the game sometimes thinks my system is running
at 135 mhz! Oy vey.....
But finally, here's the part where I'm hoping one of you can help me:
tomorrow, I plan to back up my system as it sits now, and then restore my
system from the most recent backup before THAT - the one made during Step 1
as noted above.
Naturally I have lots of documents and other files that I'd like to
preserve. Now I could save them off to another disk and restore the entire
backup file, and then copy these files back.
Instead......My backup software lets me select which folders and files I
want to restore, and I wonder if there aren't certain core directories and
files that I can restore that would do the trick. Perhaps just the c:\Windows
directory and the registry?
Any advice appreciated....