XP Computer Failing - good backup - question about restore
My XP sp3 machine is starting to fail, mostly XP type crashes, might be a HD but not sure. Generaly when I see this i find that if I start with a new HD and reload windows it solves my problems. I suspect that something in XP is gone screwey. Can't open up IE 8 anymore, an whenever I open up more than a few programs the system hangs, crashes.
I have a good Acronis true image home backup on a network drive, and my True image boot disk.
What I was thinking of doing was to put in a new HD and then reload XP fresh. I don't want to just do a full recovery as I suspect my trouble is in XP or some driver type software that got loaded over time.
I know how to recover all my data, that's easy. My question to the forum is that I mostly want to recover some of the important programs like MS Office. Is it possible to recover MS office in such a form that i will not have to reactivate it?
No, you can't restore system state partially, like in your case, restore some programs but not drivers. PS - it looks like virus or system memory failure.
I talked with 'chat' support. They told me I am able to selectivy restore some programs, but do do so I must selectivly back these programs up in their own backup.
I have not tried this yet so not sure.
Thanks - I'm not sure if it is a virus or sometype of hardware failure or some bad drivers. My memory tests fine (with memtest86), and my HD checks out. Does not feel like a virus. Just not sure, perhaps something on the MB is starting to die. Been a nice stable machine for about two years now, but over the last month has started to fail alot. Starts to hang and require reboot at random times.
One can backup "program files/programname" but not windows registry entries related to the given piece of software.