I almost went offline......

[markofkane]

I got Norton Ghost 14, and Saved my Hard-drive to another Hard-drive.

Then today, I decided to do a clean install of Windows, and completed it.

I wanted a fresh start. But before Windows got done installing, i had second thoughts. I realized that with a fresh install, I'd have to activate HAL again, reinstall all my programs that I use, then install the add-ons that I use with them, etc, etc, and thought, "wait a minute, things were working fairly well, why start all over again and spend hours reinstalling things again?"

So, as soon as Windows (fresh install) booted, I restarted and used my Norton Disk Image. Maybe I'll do a fresh install later, the last time I did was April 8, 2007. But I am not as ready as I thought I was.

[caangel43]

well am glad you got that taken care of my friend

[jackgephart]

That is the fun of it man. I love to reformat. Seriously. The only thing I don't like is when people putty won't reinstall.

[markofkane]

Thanks, Josh..

I am so confused about what to do next. I am somewhat getting burned out on everything, but the computer is the only thing that interests me.
I don't have an interesting fun life much anymore.[V]

I'll survive. []

[Duskrider]

I live in fear of re-install of windows.
My gosh, I have so many programs.  I'm using 90 GB of 160 GB harddrive.
Each week I run RegistryMechanic,
Auslogic Registry Defragmentation,
Auslogic Disk Defragmentation,
Windows Scan Disk,
AVG anti-virus,
and sometimes BitDefender.
If I have a problem, I will do system restore and go back 1 or 2 weeks.

In 2005 I was confined to house for year with medical problems.
It was then I found Hal and this forum which was such a help during that time.
After a year I returned to active lifestyle but by then was hooked by Hal and you guys.  You're the greatest. [][][]

[markofkane]

Thanks, Dusky.

Here's my little story:

I've been backing up files since 2002, first to floppies (but they only hold 1.4 mb)
Then I bought an external CD Burner. (My CD ROM that came with my computer did not burn CD's)

I burned files to CD using the external CD drive, which, took about 20 minutes per CD, because it was hooked to USB 1.1.

Then I partitioned my hard-drive with partition magic, and put my media files and docs on it, so when I had to reinstall Windows, I would not lose my stuff.

Then I decided to get a second hard-drive, because if the first HD died, I'd lose it all, except I could get it off of my CDs (I have over 70 of them burned now) So, I put my files on the second partition, as well as copies on my second hard-drive, so if one failed, I just get a new HD and copy them.

all the while, I use Go-Back, which is an excellent recovery program.

However, I like to fool around with Puppy Linux, and with Go-Bac installed, I could not access the 2nd partition on my primary drive.

I decided to uninstall Go-Back, bought Norton Ghost 14, and have been using that for backups. It's ok, but takes over half and hour to back up everything, and about that long to restore.

I am having PITA problems with it, like not doing incremental backups, but instead backing up all the drives again, wasting space and running almost empty on space.

I got help, and this guy told me how to set it up for incremental backups. But I still have a few problems, like Ghost telling me I have almost no space left on my backup drive, which is a lie.

But other than that, I guess it's ok. Comes in handy if I mess something up, but take a lot longer to restore than Go-Back did.

[Bill819]

Mark
As old as I am I still goofed a week a go. I opened an email from someone that I did not know. In a flash he/she sent a trogan horse that disabled my anti-virus and then instantly download 8 sepreate viruses. Needless to say it wiped out my hard drive with Hal and tons of other stuff.
Bill

[jackgephart]

I keep all my folders and files and programs that I download that I want to save forever on an external hard drive that was in my last computer. It is very large but only has 46 GB left on it so I need to limit what I make and keep on there. I have tons of music that I just would be lost if it was, so of course, it's all on the external drive. I too have tons of CD's, a good portion of them Haptek related, and I keep them safe in a filing drawer by my computer. It looks messy, but I can find stuff very fast. I label well. I don't keep hardly anything except program file on my main hard drive (C:). Why bog that thing down unnecessarily? I could probably go through my external drive and get rid of a few unused things but I am a little lazy at times. I'd like to put everything on a bunch of DVD data CD's first before I would do that.

And yes, Mark, I can feel your pain as well. My wife is very limited in anything that she does, I mean ANYTHING, so I don't have much of a life either. Thank God for Haptek, guitar, you guys, and being a computer geek. I'd go completely nuts without that stuff.

[markofkane]

Sorry to hear about your troubles, Jack. There might be those wondering why we  play with this Haptek stuff, I don't really care what the critics say, but I figure if something is fun, and it's not hurting anyone, why not? It is like an outlet for me. I guess you know I have a father who is getting older, and has lost some of mental faculties, he cannot seem to do a lot of stuff he used to do. I have a brother who is mentally challenged. I kinda have to take care of both of them, where before, I had to take care of my mother in her last years.

But, changing the subject, I thought about an external HD, but with USB 1.1 it would be slow, but I guess I could manage. Just add new files overnight, if I had that many to back up.

Bill, I am lucky. I have protection, I don't open mail from those I do not know, plus I have spamblock, and email scanner. I never, to my knowledge, got a virus or trojan in email However, I have going to certain websites, lol. But ever since I got Firefox a few years ago, and added "no script" to it, I, to my knowledge, never get malware anymore. I found that if you try to use illegal cracks for software, you get paid back by getting a slew of viruses and spyware.
Don't get me wrong, I don't steal software anymore, but there was this Fireplace program, and it had a trial period. Well, I just uninstalled and reinstalled to get another 15 days out of it.
Time went by, and I decided to buy it a year or 2 later. But that version I had no longer was available for download, or sale. So I bought a later version.
Well, the later version was OK, but it did not include a song I liked (Christmas).

So I tried to contact the maker of the program, and asked if I could buy the registration key for the older version, and never got a response. So, I looked for a crack, and finally got one, after getting a trojan, lol. But I had GoBack, so any malware, I could "Go Back" to a time before I was infected.

I use the older version, although I bought the newer version, so I don't think that is really stealing, since they won't even let me buy the older version.

[8D][8D][8D]

[lightspeed]

hi all , well i just recently did a partial restore i to was going to do a full restore on my windows xp but opted for a partial restore which on xp will actually make a back up file of all your hard drive and save it on your c drive then you can place the files where they belong . you will have to reinsytall application files though . i reinstalled hal again and was "very" glad it created the authorization number like it was suppose to ( i did have to redownload the 6.1 hal version though . it was funny had been using this computer for quit a while and didn't realize also had a dvd burner to on it i had only been backing up stuff on cd's which is 700 mb each . i have a file for new downloaded programs , etc. and when it gets full for a cd i back it all up then after making sure the back up worked i delete all in the new program folder run ccleaner and defrag and start over again . []

[markofkane]

Well, I just did a clean install, and before I did the clean install, I moved the Zabaware folder to another drive.

After the fresh install, I installed Hal, then swapped the Zabaware folder, and everyhing was as before! (I swapped, after I shut Hal down). I did get some kind of script error, but I think it went away after messing with the options Window.
(even my Haptek folder was swapped, with all my skins)

I still got a lot of installing of other programs to do, but at least Laura remembers me and all our crazy conversations, lol.

I decided to do this, because I had a ton of programs installed, and did not want to just uninstall them all, because I had problems with errors when I uninstalled the wrong thing!

I am hoping my computer will run faster and not crash,,,, big hope, huh?

[jackgephart]

Now be honest with yourself, it was fun wasn't it? I love doing stuff like that. I kind of miss it with my new Dell. I've only had to "recover" (from the internal hard drive provided by Dell) two times in all the time I owned the computer. No disks are required anymore. Well I better go get showered for work. Later.

[markofkane]

Yeah, it's kinda fun.

I would be afraid of what would happen if a hard-drive failed, and all I had was a recovery partition on the drive that died.  [:0][:0]

That's why I backup everything (I think maybe you can clone your HD to another HD, recovery partition and all, but I am not sure)in case a Hard Drive bites the dust.[]