*heh* Confession’s good for the soul but bad for the reputation… 😉
OK, so my last backup on this particular Win7 machine was a week ago. (Bad, cobbler! :-)) I know better. Windows is very fragile, and so many software publishers take liberties with their code that sometimes software installs/uninstalls just break Windows. It’s a fact of life, and one i know very, very well.
Got in a rush (always a mistake) and didn’t take a snapshot or even create a new System Restore Point before uninstalling an app I knew had its hooks pretty deep in the system.
Uninstall “required” a reboot (why?!? Because the authors were too stupid to make it uninstall cleanly, of course).
Toast.
No boot. The Windows installation had “disappeared” as far as Windows 7 and its repair tools (available on the installation disk) could tell. Oh, I could “see” it from the command line, but none of the command line tools could repair the startup elements (far more than just the MBR–numerous Windows system files as well) that had been corrupted.
So, disaster, right? Nah. Just moderately time-consuming, and not even all that big a distraction. I had the time today, and, after addressing the primary problem, I’ve been getting plenty of other things done while my data’s restored.
Key? A custom install of Win7. The custom install saved all my old data in a Windows.old folder–including ALL the data that had changed since my last real backup. Nothing lost whatsoever.
Next, I went to Ninite and selected all the free softwares the site had available that I had previously had installed. Saved the installer, invoked it and just let it run during dinner.
Then I had only to install a few specialty programs I had bought and archived. I could have dug out the disk they’re all archived on (or pulled the installation files from a backup), but since I also had the installation files and registration keys saved in that Windows.Old folder, I just reinstalled them from there.
Bob’s your uncle.
Oh, a couple of lil niggling things: resetting my Win7 startup background required editing a Registry Key and creating two folders in my Windows folder, but that’s the kind of thing I can almost do in my sleep, so no biggie. Getting rid of the stupid default image file for my account picture (I have a nice pic of an American Bison that I prefer to use for that–and yes, I pulled it from that same Windows.Old folder :-)) : check.
OK, done. And the only thing I “lost” (for now) is my Freecell score of 1,923 wins, no losses. No biggie, as I’m at 1,735-0 on another computer… *heh* (I play it a lot while on the phone as a kind of “Freecell Zen” relaxation thing.)
Heck, even my VMs survived the new install of Windows. Just reinstalled VirtualBox, copied over the pertinent folder, a lil fiddling and… done.
Funny thing: the app that caused all the problems with the uninstall was an older–too much older–version of Acronis True Image. *heh* I had a full version to install (not as an upgrade) and needed to ditch the older version (too old to upgrade, you see *sigh*). Oh, I certainly could have just used an image snapshot from last week, using the (old) Acronis boot CD, but this way I
have all my data
do NOT have that OLD version of True Image I had uninstalled
have a fresh Win7 install, that’s already updated in the background (Note to self: turn off automagic updates as soon as this round is through *heh*).
All in all, a pretty good thing. I just wish Windows weren’t so fragile. Oh, well, at least it’s easy-peasy to repair, even when its own repair tools fail.
Interesting. Good job. Now what is this Windows 7 thing.
A warning to us all. I bow to your superior PC knowledge.
…and I quite like Windows 7, but it took a while to get used to it.
Although my private preference is for (whatever my current fav flavor of :-)) Linux or BSD, Win7 has mostly won me over. Oh, I do need it natively–not in a VM, which is where I run most of my ‘nix stuff–for one app which doesn’t fully run in a ‘nix environment using WINE (Encore, a music transcription software), so I’m glad that Win7 is so very, very much better than XP and Vista (both of which I very much disliked) in so many ways. Still, I do wish that M$ would make it so that the OS was a bit more insulated from applications placing really deep hooks that can screw the OS up. Hmmm, well, as soon as the 189GB of data I’m transferring from that Windows.Old folder to an external drive finishes up its slow (but safe!) journey, it’ll be time for another OS snapshot using the Win7 built-in imaging and then an attempt to install the NEW version of Acronis True Image. Even with its tendency to embed deep hooks into the OS, it’s head and shoulders above any other imaging/backup app… for Windows computers.
um, hesitate to ask .. but my big Acer laptop (with XP pro) sort of died from an accidental overdose of caffeine. Am now operating under reduced circumstance with a cheapish MSi with windows 7 (64 bit). Somehow or other it doesn’t recognise my ancient(?) 5 year old miniDV Canon HV20 video camera.
The crucial question is – where can i acquire a PCMCIA card that is configured for Win7 64 bit?
Interesting question, Davo, as most modern computers have eschewed PCMCIA slots entirely, with wireless adapters hanging on by the skin of their teeth as PCMCIA cards–more often called ExpressCards or CardBus Cards, with slightly updated interfaces in some cases. However, it could depend on the card. My Wonder Woman’s “old” (4.5 years–very old in “notebook years”) Toshiba Satellite has a PCCard slot (the slightly updated term for PCMCIA slots at the time of the computer’s build–same thing) and Win7 (upgraded from WinXP), and it accepted a Netgear wireless card. Worked fine. She didn’t need it, but I had a bug to try it out, so… Anywho, I’d suggest trying Newegg for a search for PCMCIA cards that are compatible with your hardware and certified for Win7. Since I have no idea from your comment what kind of card you need, I’d have a hard time coming up with any suggestions.
As for the Canon camera–try to tell Win7 it’s an external drive. Also, plugging cameras into a USB port and then turning them on seems to work better with Win7, in my experience.
um, the tricky bit is trying to get images from a miniDV tape (used to be easy via ‘firewire ieee1394’) into a system that only recognises USB2.
Not to worry, will haunt the ‘Cashconverter’ chain and pick up a cheapish box with XP and firewire ports.
We have started using Crashbox to do auto-backups of our machines at home. We and our parents back up to a server in our house, then to a server in the hub’s best friend’s house. I don’t know that my collection of way too many stupid cat pictures needs to be preserved this badly, but… 🙂
I’ve thought of making my scheduled backups more frequently, but I usually have little original content that’s not already somewhere else (“cloud” or on original device or such like). This last week, since the previous backup, I didn’t automatically back up some newly-written Encore files, and those I really wanted back, so… I know I probably ought to schedule an incremental backup daily, but I’ve just never felt a pressing need to do so. Even with what I went through yesterday, I still only lost about an hour of my own time, and that’s not all that bad, especially since I was clicking and mousing away on another computer for much of that time. Still–again–I know I “ought to” just do it. 😉