Emergency Preparation

[SRD]

1. Users are often advised to prepare a startup disk, which can be placed
on a floppy. Why exactly do we need this disk, since the computer can boot
from the Windows CD?

2. When you tell Windows you want to back up the system state, it proposes
to place the backup on "a floppy." But the sytem state doesn't fit on one
floppy or even several. This makes me wonder whether I'm doing something
wrong in issuing this instruction, that maybe I'm somehow causing Windows
to define the system state too expansively. Can someone give me the order
of magnitude of a typical system state backup?

srdiamond

 

[Mary Sauer]

If you cannot boot from the CD for some reason; then you can boot the from the
floppy. Windows has to assume not all folks have CD writers or tape capabilities for
backup.
Open Help & Support, input backup, lots of informative reading awaits you.

 

[SRD]

If you cannot boot from the CD for some reason; then you can boot the
from the floppy. Windows has to assume not all folks have CD writers or
tape capabilities for backup. Open Help & Support, input backup, lots of
informative reading awaits you.

I wish that were true. "Help and Support" exponds System Restore from all
angles, but why? It is as easy conceptually as it is ineffectual
practically. 'Automated backup and restore' receives considerable
attention, but it's unavailable to users of Windows Home and from what I
hear, otherwise limited in usefulness because the backup utility doesn't
backup to rewritable CDs. And I cannot find mention of the backup
functionalities available to users of XP Home.

Microsoft's evasion of backup seems spectacularly irresponsible. While
experts are now questioning the need to defragment, MS provides every home
user with a defrag utility. Yet the funcionality that everyone agrees is
fundamental, backup, is (willfully?) hidden from the home user.

Perhaps you or some MVP can provide some insight into Microsoft's thinking
here.

srdiamond