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By the way, another thing I do on my computer is nightly backups. I use a program called Backup MyPC from Sonic. The program lets me backup to DVD, which is what I originally did but it quickly became cumbersome. Here's what I ultimately did:

My main drive is 250Gb. I bought a 160Gb drive (mostly because that's what was available) and partitioned it into four 40Gb drives. Each drive keeps a generation of backups. I configured Backup MyPC to do a full system backup to files on the second HD every two weeks and an incremental backup each night of just what changed. Each full backup and associated incremental backups run on separate partitions, so I'm keeping four generations of backups. I use the Task Manager to run the jobs each day.

Lately, I'm beginning to fill up my backup drives, so I'm going to have to reconfigure my backups to be three partitions of approx 53Gb and redo my nightly tasks. It's a bit tedious to set up, but once it's done it's great. The only downside is that Windows XP requires the login ID that runs the jobs to have a password.

I've had to restore from my backups two or three times since doing this, mostly because installs or upgrades of software messed something up. The restore process (for me) is to reinstall Windows XP (doesn't matter which version), then reinstall Backup My PC, then restore the latest full system backup (which should bring XP back to current), then restore all the incremental backups since the last full backup. As luck would have it, my restores were always in the second week of incrementals, meaning about a dozen restores before my system was back.

Once done, everything was back to normal as if the outage never happened. I suppose you could replace a defective C: drive, and then restore your backups to that in order to replace a drive and still have your old configuration in place without losing anything.

-PJ