> Some Windows disaster recovery approaches It is entirely possible to create a Windows XP boot disk with applications on it. One approach that works is BartPE.
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ It takes several hours and some careful work to create it, and since you will be running off a CD, it is slower while running than Windows installed on a faster hard drive. I have installed various versions of Windows at least a couple hundred times, and I don't favor the approach of having the install media on a CD or DVD, or on a flash drive to restore a working system, especially in a hurry, or especially in an emergency. Practical approaches for the individual, as opposed to a larger corporation include the following, ranked from number 1 down in my approximate order of preference. 1. An imaging program that you use each time you make a substantial change to your computer, applications, or settings. I have used several imaging products for the last 8 years, and successfully imaged and restored hundreds of copies of images in an IT training environment and production environment. Imaging programs copy and restore all of the settings and applications and operating system files that otherwise take many hours to rebuild. Everything is in place and ready to operate. Commercial imaging programs copy only the files and sectors needed to replace a working machine, and are different from a forensic image, which duplicates every sector of a hard drive. A small hard drive, like a 40 GB, with only 6-8 GB actually used, can be restored from a DVD or network drive in a few minutes. This assumes the hardware hasn't changed since the image was made. 2. Some new machines include the capability to make your own restore CDs/DVD while the machine is new. It's a shame to pass this up, since it can save hours of work later, pulling drivers from the manufacturers' sites. 3. Most new laptop and desktop computers have the operating system and original applications (including trial versions) in a special partition already on a hard drive. They are normally available through a special key combination or booting from a restore CD. This type of restore can sometimes be better than a fresh installation from a Windows OS CD/DVD, since it includes a version of driver files for all the hardware that is good enough to make it all work. Many drivers get changed to correct bugs during the year or two after the machine is sold, and often need to be updated after the machine is running again. 4. Put important utility and radio software copies on an SD, flash thumb drive, or pocket hard drive. If you can find another Windows machine, but don't have an Internet connection, you could still be back in business on digital modes in a few minutes. You may also want to store the pdf version of manuals for complicated equipment on the same media, or in an iPhone, iPod, or other PDA or smartphone where they are available in an emergency. 5. If you have a Windows XP installation disk to boot from, using the repair process can leave you with a working OS and all your installed applications in a few minutes, if the reason for failure is a corrupted Windows OS file or two. 6. As others have pointed out, a crashed Windows machine can be a Linux machine booted from a flash thumb drive or CD/DVD in about 3 minutes if you have one of the many bootable Linux distributions, which are often free. 7. You can run Windows as a virtual machine, in a virtual environment such as VMware under Linux, Fusion or Parallels on a Mac with OS X, or VMware under Windows. Because your virtual Windows XP machine is really just one (large) file, or several files, you can keep a copy of it available. You can start and run it on another PC (Intel to Intel, or AMD to AMD processors) with all your applications intact, using a copy of the same virtual environment. VMware Player is free, to use on the Windows host machine that will run your virtual machine. The advantage of a virtual machine is that all you have to get running on your crashed machine, or another machine, is a copy of the virtual environment, and your whole "machine" will then be running. You may find that some of the "radioware" applications have issues running in a virtual machine, although I have run some successfully. An advantage to a virtual machine is that you can have several versions of it, if there are applications that don't get along well when installed with each other, due to driver conflicts and similar problems. Thank you. Charles Preston KL7OA > > > Messages in this topic (10) > ________________________________________________________________________ > ________________________________________________________________________ > 2a. Boot discs for emcomm/ham radio > Posted by: "Andrew O'Brien" k3uka...@gmail.com obrienaj > Date: Thu Jun 11, 2009 6:14 am ((PDT)) > > I had a PC problem last night and Windows would not load. I was > able to get on the Internet and active in digital modes within a few > short minutes by booting a CD that contained Fldigi via Linux. This > simple way of getting on the air when a HD crashes of Windows fails > made me wonder if there is a Windows CD somewhere that we can boot > and it also contains a browser, digital mode software, etc? > > > The CD that Dave and Skip made available for FL-digi sure helped me. > > Andy K3UK
