Please stop recommending quick fixes.

[MACH2]

responders and posters need to be aware that certain commands from dos boot screen can actually do more damage to a persons system.

i.e. scanreg stuff , reg hacks etc..

Just be aware that simple maintenance fixes about 50% of these problems. of course keeping eyes on the kids.

my 2 cents.

[MACH2]

anybody who can't respond to the mach show is either dead or can't type. (monsters)

M O N S T E R.

see how easy?

[deltarho]

Jeff

So, we should be worried about the 50% of problems fixed by complicated maintenance fixes then?

I have 15 reg backups on one drive and 10 repeated on another. Each month I do a reg backup to another folder and I have 10 of them. So, I can go back 10 months and check out a system.ini, win.ini, autoexec.bat, config.sys or msdos.sys.

Not long ago I was trying a compacting idea which went belly up and I hit the desktop minus a User.dat. Hell, I had plenty to choose from and I was back in there in minutes trying to find what went wrong.

Folks who only keep 5 backups and use scanreg /restore, which I never use, at the drop of a hat should only use one reg hack and that is the one which disables regedit.

If everyone took the advice of Nick Grana, for one, and had at least 10 reg backups then there wouldn't be any need to issue warnings.

The problem is such good advice goes in one ear and out the other and it's only a matter of time before there is visit here from their machine at work, or wherever, squealing "I can't get to the desktop - what do I do"

I have a little batch file which quickly toggles between two different scanreg.ini fies. A quick backup and toggle back and that's my monthly backup out of the way. A few seconds a month. A rarely used app played up one day. It took a while to suss it out but what saved me was a four month old system.ini.

I'm afraid I could rattle on for ages on this.

PS Dead guys don't type too fast.

[MACH2]

del.. Not necessarily fixes persay. but general maintenance is not usually deployed by the vast computer society. I'm mearly pointing out and agreeing with your points. often using these commands on systems that require a system recovery disk fingers down my throat can rip the operating system up on some proprietary system fingers down my throat again.

All too often you see posts that don't include system info etc. and I see to many responders dishing out potentially bad advice.

I agree on backing up registry but I don't do that much reg editing anyway. and since there is nothing on my c: except windows components and a few misc apps. reinstalling is always a breeze for me.

mach visit the mach2 show.

[Nick Grana]

I don't do that much reg editing anyway

Most people don't fiddle with the middle.
It's the innocent little D/L's we play around with that invade our reg on a frequent basis. It's always nice to know how to get
back to square one in minutes as opposed to hours.

You're right about quick advise. What works for one will not
only not work for another, but totally mess up the rest of the
system.

One thing that does apply to everyone equally and without
prejudice is the constant need for good backups.

I took a penny for your thoughts and sub'd it from your 2 cents
worth.
Now left with a stray penny.

[deltarho]

and I see to many responders dishing out potentially bad advice.

What I find astonishing is when someone writes something and they are corrected, more ofen than not in part, and my 'In one ear and out the other' is seen again and sometimes only hours later when they have obviously seen the correction.

The honourable member from Whitby, Ontario has put me right on more than one occasion, and I'm far from alone, and I've made every effort to get 'genned up' and I'm much the better informed for it.

We see erronoeous advice being passed along and I'm left wondering if anyone along the chain actually gives it a thorough work out - probably not.

[MACH2]

You guys are probably frowning on my method of my system hd setups but actually it's very efficient for me. I test a lot of freeware. I try to stay away from 30 day trials, betas unless well developed, etc.

there's only a few apps I need to install that require a reg key. i.e.. office but all apps including the install.exe's still reside on my second drive. so any re-installtions are done on a need to use basis. since hds are faster than cd's or downloads

but.. since I usually do a Clean install about once a year, (I'm latent by about a year and a half.) I don't like reinstalling that much, a clean install alway peps up the system. I attribute that to housekeeping. occasional lil problem here or there but my system is very stable. (I scandisk a lot but don't defrag as much as some report "daily" to me is obsurd.and just wears out the hd.. I may defrag once a month or so.)

mach

[deltarho]

If I had a 2nd hd I'd be going along a similar route. For most users some of the newest hd are enormous and I often think they'd be better served by having two at half the size.

[ecrosson]

I very much agree with the last post from deltarho, I run my systems with more than one drive in them, for example, I have one system with 2, 40 GB hard drives in it in place of one 80 GB drive.
I have always thought that if I lost that one huge drive, I lose all my data but if I have it split with just the OS, and assorted other select files on it. I have had to redo an Operating system, and this made it so I just re installed the OS, and service packs, then restored from a backup on the other drive. I was back up and running in a few hours, as opposed to a day or so, and frustrated.. I also think the dea of more than one drive makes things seem a bit snappier for my machines too.

Just my take on the matter.

[deltarho]

Yep.

There are so many good practices available to us but so many folk who don't employ them and learn that doing something bad once is once too often.

[greengoose1]

Hi mach, nice thread you started. People need to pay attention to maintenence that works for them and covers all the bases. ecrosson pointed out to use two smaller drives instead on one big one which I agree with. This allows backups on the second drive. Right now some HDDs are less than a buck a GB and watch the sales.

Anytime I start a project in an application or downloading I always make a regedit export and save to file. Then at end of session I will ghost to the second hard drive. I also make additional backups. One to a second computer and burning a CD. Also on small "stuff" I still use 3.5 floppies.

[Nick Grana]

Seen it more times than I care to, the soul with a 100GB
drive partitioned up the ying yang and multiple backups
on multiple partitions. Then one morning the drive fails to
spin up, crashes and burns. That backup is useless as ****
on a ****. "But I had backups!!!"

[GodMonstr]

Originally posted by MACH2
responders and posters need to be aware that certain commands from dos boot screen can actually do more damage to a persons system.

I totally agree.

regscan might fix one thing, but everything else can go to heck.

If I had a copy of a registry I was using last week, it would be absolutly worthless to me. I had new hardware weekly and new software daily.

For me, regular maintainence is to format my C drive and reload the programs I am currently using.

Got three cents? All I have is a nickel.

Kevin

[greengoose1]

Hi Nick, You hit it on the head. If something goes wrong mechanically to the hard drive it does not make any difference which dive you are backed up on. The data is lost!!

If a person is luckey to have two computers they can be networked and then Ghost or a replicator to save the info. Or add a second HDD to the first computer previously mentioned.

Burning to a CD as said before is good also. There are other ways and more expensive ways also to accomplish the same thing.