There’s a few questions I hear regulary, the first is “Is Vista any good?”. Well thats a very broad question and one that I’d answer yes, but I’ll go into that a little deeper later.

The other question is “can you save all my files?”, and that question always comes after “My PC’s crashed!”.

You may have heard or even been told, back up your files, and many of you who have ever experienced a fatal crash or just the paranoid user out there, will be backing up quite often.

So here’s a real good question to throw at you, ‘How are you backing up, and is it complete, I mean fully complete, should you experience a crash can you return your PC to exactly the same state it was in 10 minutes ago?’

And why am I discussing this, no its not the topic of the moment, its a back up gone slightly wrong! Which brings me back the the Vista topic.

I have 2 PC’s, a desktop PC and a laptop, broadband internet and a home wireless network with my favourite Netgear router. I ran a beta (test) version of Vista before christmas last year at stage 2 just prior to release, on my laptop, it impressed me, no initial signs of problems. So at release towards the end of January this year I purchased an upgrade disc to upgrade XP on the desktop PC. It did take a couple of attempts to install, I think the issues were due to the PC being an OEM PC from Packard Bell, the way in which the XP install had been configured was across 2 drives, C & D, the Vista install wouldn’t allow me to upgrade using the main C drive and so D was used as the installation drive. This presented no further problems and is running fine to this very day.

Compatibility within hardware and software has been a concern for many. I did receive an annoying error message for a couple of weeks while trying to play video files, a quick software update for Nero corrected the problem. I have come across a few older hardware issues with printers, scanners and broadband modems. Luckily they haven’t been too much of an issue for the owners who have embraced their new peripherals with joy!

So I bought a new laptop with Vista preinstalled, as I also tested Microsofts new security software ‘Live Onecare’ last year I was offered a great purchase price at launch, the license covers a total of 3 PC’s so I installed it immediatly onto the laptop. From here on I started having problems. After only a week I had reinstalled the software a number of times. It wouldn’t automatically update as it should. I then tried installing other security software suites but each time the installation was interrupted. Was the Windows installer damagd? It crossed my mind several times but why had all the other software I use installed without problems? So I went back to Onecare and after 2 or 3 attempts it installed and seemed to work fine, then a few weeks later it returned to its none updating state. I decided to leave it in the hope that it was a minor blip and that it would eventually update. Three weeks later and it hadn’t! So I decided that a Windows recovery from scratch would be the solution, so using Windows own back up utility I backed up all my documents, or so I believed!!!! I was under the impression that using the Windows utility would create a full back up including my emails and documents, but upon restoring the system and applying the back up I found to my horror that all my emails had disappeared! 

A week later and I seem to be having the same problems with Onecare! I’m now left with the decision whether I should take the laptop back or try and live with it? I’ll have to think on about that one.

But the main issue to think about is back up! Is your back up everything you need? Think about it carefully, and if you’re using a back up utility like I did, make sure it covers all the bits you think it does!

If you’ve never even thought about it and after reading this the thought of losing all that precious work, photos and music is sending chills down your spine, then now is the time to invest. And don’t worry, the cost is very little. My favourite piece of software for this job is Acronis True Image Home now in its 10th edition. Priced at $49.99 (around £27), the software can make a complete image back up of your existing hard drive including all programs, and then add changes to that back up as and when you require. It will create a hidden section on your hard drive so that you cannot damage the backup by accident, you can even make an exact clone to another hard drive. Take a look, you’ll be glad you backed up!

Related posts:

1. Back from the break
2. Back from Holiday
3. Back up & Running