S
Stan Shankman
Greetings all,
I have been using Windows 2000 Pro for quite a while now. And I can say that
I am very happy with it. And for the most part, I have had few problems –
and none that I could not eventually fix.
I have been running with a relatively small SCSI drive. (I do have other
much larger IDE drives on the system.) But now, I find that the time has
come to replace that small SCSI system drive with new larger one. And,
interestingly enough, I just had a disturbing event happen on my machine. We
had a power glitch that forced the machine to shut down. This, of course,
has happened several before, after all, the system has been up for many
years now, but never before with the disastrous effects incurred this last
time. Let me explain:
Once the power glitch had passed, the machine went into an ‘auto boot’
sequence. But never finished booting – instead, it proceeded normally but
then abruptly stopped and did a re-start that led to an endless loop of
restarting and rebooting. I tried all the 'F8' tricks. But I did have
Internet access on another machine, so I immediately researched the problem
on the web, and set about trying to fix it. I went through all of the
“emergency repair” procedures, and did all the usual (and expected?)
things - plus a bunch more things. Surprisingly, nothing seemed to work. And
I was getting ready to just format and start over - a serious issue because
of the nature of this very intricate and highly valued system - when I tried
one last thing that got me back on the air. Well, in truth, I tried two last
things and am now uncertain as to which did the trick. (Who know? Maybe it
took both.)
What I did was:
1) I reset the motherboard BIOS to the ‘failsafe’ defaults.
2) I removed one IDE hard disk.
Now, as I figure it, the removal of that IDE hard disk, forced the boot
procedure, as the result of discovering that the Hardware Profile had
changed, to “go down a different path”. And the BIOS changes may have
eliminated some difficulties in the BIOS power settings. (These are, of
course, just guesses.) Anyway, for whatever reason, my system regained its
ability to boot – and returned to its former glory.
But I’m getting off the track . . .
.. . . What I discovered, during my Internet investigation, was that HAD I
PLACE THE OS IN ITS OWN PARTITION, it would have made the process of
formatting and reloading the OS much simpler. (A process that, fortunately,
I did not have to go through.) - And so now that I’m about to replace the
system drive, and have a chance to start over, I’m wounding just how to
proceed. The thought occurred to me that, if I create a separate partition
for the OS, It might be wise to create two identical small partitions. That
way, once the system has been reloaded (and updated etc.), I could simply
access the Emergency Repair Console, and xcopy every thing over to the
second partition – where it would remain as an unused yet bootable ‘backup’
of the NTFS folder. But this may all be overkill - I don’t know. – Which is
kind of what I’m getting at in this posting. What should I do?
From an advanced user standpoint, what is the sensible way to install
Windows 2000 Pro? Maybe I should place an NTFS image on a DVD and keep that
around for safety sake. Oh, and there are other thing that I would like to
know:
How much fiddling with NTFS files are third party programs expected (or
allowed) to do? Isn’t it true that some legitimate programs do, and
rightfully so, make changes to certain DLL files found in the NTFS folder?
If so, that would mean that any image of the NTFS Folder is subject to
getting out of sync as various programs are loaded and unloaded. All of this
seems to complicate the idea of doing an NTFS Folder image backup. What do
you experts say?
One last thing; No matter how careful I am, I still manage to pick up an
occasional spyware item. I have been fairly successful at purging the system
of these nasty items, but I do sense that one or more of them have left
behind - ah, how should I say? Artifacts. One annoyance in particular seems
to be plaguing my system: File Explorer recently began generating “unable to
read memory location such-and-such” errors – forcing it to terminate, drop
into de-bug mode, and even on occasion causing system instability. I am
fairly sure that my actual memory is fine. I feel that this condition was
brought about by me having failed to remove one of the spyware items
correctly. All of which I hope to clear up after my upcoming reload.
But
still, the condition troubles me because I would like to take precautions
against it happening in the future, yet again, am unsure quite how to
proceed. So I’m hopping someone will offer some suggestions about dealing
with ill-mannered programs, there effect, and how to deal with them. Maybe
what I need is Windows XP Pro – that way I can take system “snapshots”. How
well does that work out anyway? Is it recommended?
Anyway, I’m starting to make this posting a little too long, so in short:
What do I need to know before I do my reload? (Still waiting - the new
drive is on order.)
What safety precautions do I need to know about?
What backup method proves to be most adequate?
Can any of the migration tools help me if before I had one big partition
and now wish to isolate the system proper in its own partition?
Sorry for the rambling, but as you can tell, I’m kind of on a roll here. -
Two strong cups of coffee down.
Oh, and I'm looking into getting a UPS too.
Thanks all,
- Stan Shankman
I have been using Windows 2000 Pro for quite a while now. And I can say that
I am very happy with it. And for the most part, I have had few problems –
and none that I could not eventually fix.
I have been running with a relatively small SCSI drive. (I do have other
much larger IDE drives on the system.) But now, I find that the time has
come to replace that small SCSI system drive with new larger one. And,
interestingly enough, I just had a disturbing event happen on my machine. We
had a power glitch that forced the machine to shut down. This, of course,
has happened several before, after all, the system has been up for many
years now, but never before with the disastrous effects incurred this last
time. Let me explain:
Once the power glitch had passed, the machine went into an ‘auto boot’
sequence. But never finished booting – instead, it proceeded normally but
then abruptly stopped and did a re-start that led to an endless loop of
restarting and rebooting. I tried all the 'F8' tricks. But I did have
Internet access on another machine, so I immediately researched the problem
on the web, and set about trying to fix it. I went through all of the
“emergency repair” procedures, and did all the usual (and expected?)
things - plus a bunch more things. Surprisingly, nothing seemed to work. And
I was getting ready to just format and start over - a serious issue because
of the nature of this very intricate and highly valued system - when I tried
one last thing that got me back on the air. Well, in truth, I tried two last
things and am now uncertain as to which did the trick. (Who know? Maybe it
took both.)
What I did was:
1) I reset the motherboard BIOS to the ‘failsafe’ defaults.
2) I removed one IDE hard disk.
Now, as I figure it, the removal of that IDE hard disk, forced the boot
procedure, as the result of discovering that the Hardware Profile had
changed, to “go down a different path”. And the BIOS changes may have
eliminated some difficulties in the BIOS power settings. (These are, of
course, just guesses.) Anyway, for whatever reason, my system regained its
ability to boot – and returned to its former glory.
But I’m getting off the track . . .
.. . . What I discovered, during my Internet investigation, was that HAD I
PLACE THE OS IN ITS OWN PARTITION, it would have made the process of
formatting and reloading the OS much simpler. (A process that, fortunately,
I did not have to go through.) - And so now that I’m about to replace the
system drive, and have a chance to start over, I’m wounding just how to
proceed. The thought occurred to me that, if I create a separate partition
for the OS, It might be wise to create two identical small partitions. That
way, once the system has been reloaded (and updated etc.), I could simply
access the Emergency Repair Console, and xcopy every thing over to the
second partition – where it would remain as an unused yet bootable ‘backup’
of the NTFS folder. But this may all be overkill - I don’t know. – Which is
kind of what I’m getting at in this posting. What should I do?
From an advanced user standpoint, what is the sensible way to install
Windows 2000 Pro? Maybe I should place an NTFS image on a DVD and keep that
around for safety sake. Oh, and there are other thing that I would like to
know:
How much fiddling with NTFS files are third party programs expected (or
allowed) to do? Isn’t it true that some legitimate programs do, and
rightfully so, make changes to certain DLL files found in the NTFS folder?
If so, that would mean that any image of the NTFS Folder is subject to
getting out of sync as various programs are loaded and unloaded. All of this
seems to complicate the idea of doing an NTFS Folder image backup. What do
you experts say?
One last thing; No matter how careful I am, I still manage to pick up an
occasional spyware item. I have been fairly successful at purging the system
of these nasty items, but I do sense that one or more of them have left
behind - ah, how should I say? Artifacts. One annoyance in particular seems
to be plaguing my system: File Explorer recently began generating “unable to
read memory location such-and-such” errors – forcing it to terminate, drop
into de-bug mode, and even on occasion causing system instability. I am
fairly sure that my actual memory is fine. I feel that this condition was
brought about by me having failed to remove one of the spyware items
correctly. All of which I hope to clear up after my upcoming reload.
Butstill, the condition troubles me because I would like to take precautions
against it happening in the future, yet again, am unsure quite how to
proceed. So I’m hopping someone will offer some suggestions about dealing
with ill-mannered programs, there effect, and how to deal with them. Maybe
what I need is Windows XP Pro – that way I can take system “snapshots”. How
well does that work out anyway? Is it recommended?
Anyway, I’m starting to make this posting a little too long, so in short:
What do I need to know before I do my reload? (Still waiting - the new
drive is on order.)
What safety precautions do I need to know about?
What backup method proves to be most adequate?
Can any of the migration tools help me if before I had one big partition
and now wish to isolate the system proper in its own partition?
Sorry for the rambling, but as you can tell, I’m kind of on a roll here. -
Two strong cups of coffee down.
Oh, and I'm looking into getting a UPS too.
Thanks all,
- Stan Shankman