Internet backup

[David J Walker]

To all you Internet experts out there!
Every so often, I (and most other people I know) need to re-install thier operating system. One of the biggest hassles with this is getting the Internet going again. What is the possibility of creating a utility that can acquire ALL the bits & bobs that M$ in its wisdom strews all over the disk & collecting them up in one easily backed up place, and then putting it all back exactly how it was with one mouse click? Or am I asking too much? This would be about the best app. in the world!

David J Walker

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[Sven Blumenstein]

I hope I understood you correctly, but you could make a image of a clean Install with a working Internet Connection and all you preferences made.
If you want to reinstall you OS, just restore the image (and you have a working OS again) and reinstall you Programms.

Take a look at Norton Ghost - www.symantec.com

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Sven Blumenstein
IT-Trainee at DECOMA Exterior Systems, Germany
E-Mail: mailto:[email protected][NOSPAM]cycos.net[email protected][NOSPAM]cycos.net</A>
Programming with: PB/DLL, MASM, VB, VC++, LCC, VBA, WML

[David J Walker]

Hi Sven

Not quite. I wish to back up my Internet in its current state, mail boxes, addresses, etc. complete and as it is at this moment.
The problem is mainly trying to remember where all the bits & pieces are, and what registry settings need to be kept. It would be a real bonus if this could transfer across upgrades, ie W98-W2K for example.
As to Norton Ghost, a real life-saver. I already use this on some machines, often backing up the whole drive before reinstalling, so nothing can get lost!

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[Jim Padgett]

Just save your registry... All the networking info is in there.

This does nothing for you phone numbers and dial up networking stuff
though...



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Jim Padgett
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Mel Bishop]

Hi David.

I am frequently in the same boat you find yourself. I play with
the drive or O/S, mess it up & reinstall the O/S. The best way
I found to solve your (my) problem is to install the minimum
amount of the O/S, getting what you want in it and then do a
full system backup.

Mess something up again, do a system retore and there you are.

Hope this helps
Cheers
Mel


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[George Bleck]

I always partition a drive into 2 partitions C: is system and D: is data,

If I need to reformat the system drive my mail/address book, and the like are never touched.

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George W. Bleck
Senior System Engineer
KeySpan Corporation

[Frederic Faure]

I always partition a drive into 2 partitions C: is system and D: is data, If I need to reformat the system drive my mail/address book, and the like are never touched.

That doesn't work because information is spread in different locations (registry, INI files, :\program files, etc.), so just saving a Data partition often doesn't enable you to reinstall a host completely. I long for the DOS days when all you had to do was zip up a directory and drop it into a new host... This problem is also true of Unix hosts (just saving eg. /usr/local is NOK if the app also installs stuff in /etc, /lib, etc.)

The only safe solution is to run an imaging software (dump/dd, Ghost, DriveImage, ImageCast, etc.) at regular intervals. Windows applications have the benefit of only uploading clusters that actually contain data instead of the whole partition (eg. if you only have 500M of data in a 2G partition, the image will only be 500M, and can actually be made even smaller if you decide to use compression.) I've used DriveImage and Ghost with good results.

My ¥.2
FF.



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[David J Walker]

So, what is required is a full list of everything (files, .MBX, .WAB, reg. keys, etc.) that is needed to completely specify the connection on a particular machine. The problem is not so much on my personal machine, but the screwed-up messes that I am called upon to sort out for my clients. In these cases, as much info needs to be saved as possible, and doing it manually can take some time. Such a utility would surely be a commercial proposition, as I am sure that I am not the only ont in this position!

DJW

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