Spring Into Windows XP Service Pack 2

It's my sincerest wish that, with the possible exception of creating a regular backup job, whatever knowledge you've retained from this chapter is quickly forgotten. Nothing could be better for your computing well being.

Why would I say something like that? Why would I want you to forget something I've spent hours and hours crafting? Because if you've forgotten this information, then you didn't need it, and that's a very good thing indeed.

Don't get me wrong: this is very valuable information. If you're unsure, just reserve final judgment until after you've had a hard disk crash, computer virus, flood, theft, power surge, or some other calamity, natural or otherwise, that causes you to lose the last month's worth of work. When deciding on your backup strategy, always consider the following: how much of the work on your computer are you willing to create from scratch a second time?

You now know about the Windows XP Backup Utility, and you even know how to install it on an XP Home system, where it is not installed by default. You learned about how to create a backup job and how to schedule that backup job so that your data is automatically protected, even when you're away from the computer. After all, you might forget to backup your data; the computer will not.

Also, you learned about the System Restore feature that is built into Windows XP, monitoring system changes in the background. You learned how Windows automatically sets these restore points, and about how you could set these yourself. More significantly, you learned how to use these restore points in the event that a system change causes instability.

Again, though, hopefully you will not commit any of these procedures to memory; but will only use this chapter as a reference.

In the next chapter, we'll investigate some of the more common problems you'll likely encounter during your time with XP. With an understanding of the fixes for these problems, it will be less likely you'll have to refer back to this chapter in the future.