Absolute Beginners Guide to Upgrading and Fixing Your PC

If you're a worrisome type, you're probably convinced that a PC disaster is just around the corner and you're wondering what in the world you can do to prepare for such a catastrophe. Well, one of the most important things you can do is to plan for that eventuality by preparing a PC Survival Kit.

The contents of your PC Survival Kit will prove indispensable if you are to recover your system after a complete or partial hard disk crash. In other words, these items are required accessories for every cautious PC user.

The good news is, you probably already have all of these items close at hand. What kinds of things are we talking about? Here's a checklist of the items you need to prepare:

PC Survival Kit Checklist

Original Windows installation CD

Windows Emergency Startup Disk

Set of backup data

Original installation CDs for all your software programs

Disk utility software

Original Windows Installation CD

Your original Windows installation CD is the most important part of your PC Survival Kit no matter which version of Windows you're running.

The reason is simple. If your hard disk gets trashed, you'll need to reinstall Windows. And the best way to reinstall Windows is from the original Windows installation CD. (This is preferable to spending the money for a new copy of Windows, of course.)

caution

Just having the Windows installation CD isn't quite good enough. You also need to have the CD case, in order to access the product key needed to reinstall the software. The CD without the product key is practically useless!

In addition, from Windows 98 on, you use the Windows installation CD to boot your computer, on the occasion where your hard disk is trashed or otherwise inaccessible. So if your computer can't start by itself, all you have to do is insert the Windows installation CD, restart your PC, and your system should boot up from there.

Windows Emergency Startup Disk

Okay, I know I just said that (from Windows 98 on) you can boot your computer from the Windows installation CD. That is definitely the preferred approach when you can't boot from your hard disk. However, if you for some reason can't access your CD-ROM drive, you need another option. (And if you have a pre-Windows 98 PC, booting from CD isn't an option, anyway.)

For that reason, you need to create a Windows Emergency Startup Disk. It's easy to do, and it could be a real lifesaver in the event of a catastrophic problem.

To create an Emergency Startup Disk, you must instruct Windows to format a bootable disk. Just follow these instructions:

  1. Insert a blank disk into your PC's disk drive.

  2. Open My Computer.

  3. Right-click the disk drive icon and select Format from the pop-up menu.

  4. When the Format dialog box appears, check the Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk option.

  5. Click Start.

To use the Windows Emergency Startup Disk, insert it into your PC's A: drive, and then turn on your machine. Your PC should start and, after some simple system diagnostics, display an A:\ prompt. From here you can use simple disk utilities (such as ScanDisk) to diagnose problems and hopefully get your system up and running again.

tip

To minimize the possibility of erasing or overwriting the Startup disk, open the write-protect notch of the disk.

Backup Data

Now we come to the part of the PC Survival Kit that requires a bit of work on your part making backup copies of all your important data.

The best way to protect yourself against catastrophic data loss is to make backup copies of all your important files. That means all your Word and Excel documents, Quicken or Microsoft Money financial records, MP3 audio files, digital photographs, and so on everything you have stored on your hard disk that you can't (or don't want to) re-create from scratch.

After you get in the habit of doing it, it's relatively easy to make backup copies of these files. All you need is a file backup program (such as Microsoft Backup, included free with Windows) and some sort of backup media. This type of storage needs to be large (because you'll be backing up lots of files) and relatively inexpensive. In the old days, serious users gravitated to removable tape cartridges as backup media; today, CD-RW discs are much preferred.

If your backup needs are more sophisticated than what Microsoft Backup can achieve, check out Handy Backup (www.handybackup.com), NTI Backup Now (www.ntius.com), or Retrospect Backup (www.dantz.com). Or you can use an online backup service, which lets you back up your files online to a separate Internet site; this way, if your house burns down, your key files are safely stored offsite. Some of the more popular online backup services include @Backup (www.backup.com), Connected (www.connected.com), IBackup (www.ibackup.com), and Xdrive (www.xdrive.com).

"Mike Sez"

Of course, you don't need to back up your entire hard disk, nor do you probably want to. (It takes too long!) I recommend you back up all your data files, but don't back up your software programs; you can always reinstall your programs from their original installation CDs.

Making a Backup with Microsoft Backup

Microsoft Backup is a Windows utility that lets you store your backup files on floppy disks, backup tapes, Zip disks, or CD-RW discs. If you ever happen to have a hard drive crash, you can also use Microsoft Backup to restore your backed-up files from your backup copies, and thus minimize your data loss.

To back up your data with Microsoft Backup, follow these steps:

  1. From within My Computer, right-click the drive you want to back up, and then select Properties from the pop-up menu.

  2. When the Properties dialog box appears, select the Tools tab.

  3. Click the Backup Now button to launch the Backup or Restore Wizard.

  4. Click the Next button.

  5. Check the Back Up Files and Settings option and click Next. This displays the What to Back Up screen, shown in Figure 19.4.

    Figure 19.4. Use the Microsoft Backup utility to back up important data files from your hard drive.

  6. Select the files you want to back up: your personal documents and settings, everybody's documents and settings, all data on this computer, or specific files that you select (the Let Me Choose What to Back Up option). Most users back up either their own personal data or (if you've configured your system for multiple users) everyone's data. Click Next when you're done selecting.

  7. Select the specific backup device, and then click Next.

  8. You'll now be prompted to insert the appropriate backup media; follow the balance of the onscreen instructions to complete the backup.

note

Older versions of Windows came with the Microsoft Backup utility pre-installed. If you're running Windows XP Home Edition, however, you might think that Microsoft took the tried-and-true Microsoft Backup utility out of the new operating system. This isn't the case; it's still there, it's just not installed by default. (In the Home Edition, that is; Microsoft Backup is installed by default in XP Professional.) So if you want to use Microsoft Backup, you'll need to manually install it from your Windows XP installation CD.

Restoring Files from a Backup

If you ever need to restore files from a backup, you do it from the same Backup or Restore Wizard. In this instance, when you get to the second screen, select the Restore Files and Settings option.

tip

Make sure you keep your backup copies in a safe place and, ideally, in a different place from your computer, like in a safe deposit box or at a neighbor's house. This way, if your computer is damaged as part of a larger disaster (fire, flood, or something similarly dire), your backup data will still be safe.

The wizard will now display the What to Restore screen. Select which files and folders you want to restore, and then click the Next button. You'll be prompted to insert your backup copies; follow the onscreen instructions to copy your backup files back to their original locations.

Original Software Installation Media

In the event of a hard disk crash, you'll lose everything on your hard disk including all your software programs. Although you should be able to restore your data files from a backup (see the section previous), you probably didn't back up all the contents of your hard disk in particular, your programs.

This means that, if your hard disk crashes, you'll need to reinstall all your software programs. Of course, you can only do this if you hang on to all your old software installation CDs. And remember to keep the software packages and instruction manuals, as well in case you need to access any appropriate installation codes or passwords.

caution

The files you restore from a backup might not be the most recent versions of those files, especially if the original files were used anytime after your most recent backup. Still, recovering a slightly older version of a file is better than not having any version of that file at all.

Useful Disk Utilities

Now, if you really want to play it safe, include in your survival kit at least one of the third-party disk utility programs we talked about earlier in this chapter. You can use these utilities to repair most of the damage your hard disk might incur in a crash.

THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM

Here are the key points to remember from this chapter:

  • Dedicating a few minutes a week to PC maintenance can prevent serious problems from occurring in the future.

  • To delete unused files from your hard disk, use the Disk Cleanup utility.

  • To defragment a fragmented hard disk, use the Disk Defragmenter utility.

  • To find and fix hard disk errors, use the ScanDisk utility.

  • Other useful third-party utilities include Norton SystemWorks and CheckIt Diagnostics.

  • To prepare for any future problems, make sure you have a PC Survival Kit prepared, consisting of your original Windows installation CD, a Windows Emergency Startup Disk, a set of backup data, the original installation CDs for all your software programs, and appropriate disk utility software.

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