yordan

Probbably some of you have the same annoying problem.
I often have to boot under DOS in order to perform some maintenance things - re-format or re-partition hard disk, do virus diagnostics or recover files.
I love using fdisk, or McAfee viruscan in command line mode. I love typing "fdisk". For that, MS-DOS command line is nice.
Booting from a flashdisk is faster than floppies, and a flashdisk a lots more space than a floppy.
So, now, how to boot from a flashdisk without complicating or dangerous things ?
Here is the way I do it. Of course, I found the trick from several places on the Internet, but nobody gave the step-by-step I needed, that's why I wrote my own one, here it is.
My own USB flashdisk is a Cosk*in 2gb, from http://www.cosk-in.com/
First of all, let's see if your PC is able to boot from a flashdisk.
Let's first power off your PC (correctly shutting down Linux or Crosoft Windows)

1. Testing the hardware.
Insert your USB flashdisk in a USB port, and power on your PC. Then, go to the BIOS SETUP menu (usually it's F2).
Then look at the "BOOT" section. Depending on your BIOS version, have a look at the first boot device, it can be seen as a removable device or a hard disk. Of course, before changing anything here, you must carefully write down the initial settings in order to be able to come back in case of trouble.
If the BIOS sees your flashdisk as a removable device, choose it as first boot device.
If your flashdisk is seen as a disk, you have to put this disk as first disk.

Save your settings and exit.

2) Making the flashdisk bootable.
Now, go to a very old computer running windows 98. I know, sometimes it's rather hard to find one. Personnally, I used a vmware virtual machine on my brand new PC.
When you are on your Windows 98 or Windows Millenium system, download the drivers for your USB flashdisk. This will probably need a reboot.
As soon as your flashdisk drivers are installed, you will be able to see your flashdisk files using Microsoft Windows Explorer. Remember the name of the concerned disk. Let's let's suppose that your USB disk drive name is "U:"
Then, open a command prompt windows (for instance click Run --> Execute --> command)
At the DOS command prompt, type :

SYS U:This "sys u:" command transfers on your USB flashdisk the system files needed for booting your flashdisk, exactly like it would do it on any standard disk. One of this files you probably already know, it's the well-known "command.com" file.
The other files are IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS

That's all. You made your flashdisk bootable. And you already know it's harmless, because you simply added some files to your flashdisk. If you want to go back, simply remove these files.

Now the most interesting thing :

3) Boot from the flashdisk.

Everything is setup. While your system is powered down, insert your USB flashdisk in any free port, and power on your pc.
After a couple of seconds you will see the popular C> prompt. You may type VER in order to verify the version.
That's all you can do at that point. But if you inserted some more files (like format.com or fdisk.com) you have a working ms-dos system.
Further you may add mouse.com, or probably and autoexec.bat or and/or a config.sys file.



4) Discussion.
I love this method because it's simple and harmless. You do almost nothing special on your flashdisk, you just add a couple of files.
I used some other more sophisticated tools from the internet, they started by a flashdisk reformat (and I lost all my favourite files) and then they did not work.
That's why I love this way using an old win95 system and just type "sys U:"

Probbably some of you have the same annoying problem.
I often have to boot under DOS in order to perform some maintenance things - re-format or re-partition hard disk, do virus diagnostics or recover files.
I love using fdisk, or McAfee viruscan in command line mode. I love typing "fdisk". For that, MS-DOS command line is nice.
Booting from a flashdisk is faster than floppies, and a flashdisk a lots more space than a floppy.
So, now, how to boot from a flashdisk without complicating or dangerous things ?
Here is the way I do it. Of course, I found the trick from several places on the Internet, but nobody gave the step-by-step I needed, that's why I wrote my own one, here it is.
My own USB flashdisk is a Cosk*in 2gb, from http://www.cosk-in.com/
First of all, let's see if your PC is able to boot from a flashdisk.
Let's first power off your PC (correctly shutting down Linux or Crosoft Windows)

1. Testing the hardware.
Insert your USB flashdisk in a USB port, and power on your PC. Then, go to the BIOS SETUP menu (usually it's F2).
Then look at the "BOOT" section. Depending on your BIOS version, have a look at the first boot device, it can be seen as a removable device or a hard disk. Of course, before changing anything here, you must carefully write down the initial settings in order to be able to come back in case of trouble.
If the BIOS sees your flashdisk as a removable device, choose it as first boot device.
If your flashdisk is seen as a disk, you have to put this disk as first disk.

Save your settings and exit.

2) Making the flashdisk bootable.
Now, go to a very old computer running windows 98. I know, sometimes it's rather hard to find one. Personnally, I used a vmware virtual machine on my brand new PC.
When you are on your Windows 98 or Windows Millenium system, download the drivers for your USB flashdisk. This will probably need a reboot.
As soon as your flashdisk drivers are installed, you will be able to see your flashdisk files using Microsoft Windows Explorer. Remember the name of the concerned disk. Let's let's suppose that your USB disk drive name is "U:"
Then, open a command prompt windows (for instance click Run --> Execute --> command)
At the DOS command prompt, type :

SYS U:This "sys u:" command transfers on your USB flashdisk the system files needed for booting your flashdisk, exactly like it would do it on any standard disk. One of this files you probably already know, it's the well-known "command.com" file.
The other files are IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS

That's all. You made your flashdisk bootable. And you already know it's harmless, because you simply added some files to your flashdisk. If you want to go back, simply remove these files.

Now the most interesting thing :

3) Boot from the flashdisk.

Everything is setup. While your system is powered down, insert your USB flashdisk in any free port, and power on your pc.
After a couple of seconds you will see the popular C> prompt. You may type VER in order to verify the version.
That's all you can do at that point. But if you inserted some more files (like format.com or fdisk.com) you have a working ms-dos system.
Further you may add mouse.com, or probably and autoexec.bat or and/or a config.sys file.



4) Discussion.
I love this method because it's simple and harmless. You do almost nothing special on your flashdisk, you just add a couple of files.
I used some other more sophisticated tools from the internet, they started by a flashdisk reformat (and I lost all my favourite files) and then they did not work.
That's why I love this way using an old win95 system and just type "sys U:"

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

You want to know how they manage to give us so much space for mails?I guess that google people calculated how much a user costs (cents per storage meg) and how much a user brings money (each time you read your mail, you see ads on your screen). More disk space you have, more mails you will keep, and a mail you store is a mail you could probably read again, seing more ads.I think that it's a simple price/perfomance ratio, they estimated that giving more disk space will make more people choosing google as private mail supplier, hence they will push their IT people to also choose google as their business mail supplier.

I love the phpbb2 forum system. I used it to create my family forum. I really appreciated how easy the installation was, using the âFantasticoâ menu of my Xisto cpanel. And I appreciate the one-click backup facility provided by the forum.
Making a backup is really easy, and you have to do it often. So, in case of trouble of your forum, for instance if the forum was spoiled by some spammers, you can easily go back to a point in time where your forum worked correctly.
Also, a backup is necessary in case of a big mistake (âdo you really want to destroy your forum, answer yes or noâ â oops sorry !)
Now comes the reason of this topic. This reason is twofold.
First of all, a backup is useful only if you are sure that itâs valid. As long as you did not test your backup, you donât know if really everything is there.
Secondly, the version of phpbb on Xisto forum is 2.0.22, which is a rather old version. The forecomming version is phpbb3, currently RC7. So, you must get ready to switch from phpbb2 to phpbb3, in order to take full benefit from the new release features.
Thatâs why I suggest you to make a full backup of your current phpbb2 forum here at Xisto, and check your backup by means of perforuming a fresh installation on another machine, and switching your fresh install to phpbb3.
The whole operation is completely harmless : you donât touch your current installation, you only perform a backup. And, as you perform a fresh installation of a completely new machine, if you donât like your installation you simply remove everything on the new machine.

1. FIRST STEP : BACKUP YOUR CURRENT FORUM.
Log in to your forum using the forum administrator name and password.
Then, click âGo to the Administration pannelâ. Confirmation of your password will be asked, and you will be connected to the administration page. In the left-side pannel, go to the âGeneral Adminâ section and click âBackup Databaseâ. You will be asked for the place on your PC where to download the database backup. This file, which has a name like something.sql, is the backup we will test by mean of restoring and testing it. Put this file in a safe place, itâs your security in case of huge catastrophy experienced by your current forum.
Please perform now a copy of this file, and name this copy âmodified.sqlâ. Now we will feel free to modify this âmodified.sqlâ file because the modifications will not affect the original file.

2. DOWNLOAD A FRESH COPY OF THE PHPBB2 AND PHPBB3 SOFTWARE.
In order to master everything, even in case of a big catastrophy, you need to have all the necessary building elements. You already have tha data in your âmodified.sqlâ file, now you need the basic forum software.
You need to download the phpbb2 forum sofware from http://forums.xisto.com/forum/199-forum/ , and especially here http://forums.xisto.com/topic/88637-topic/?findpost=1064337390 .

4. INSTALL PHPBB2 ON YOUR NEW WEBSITE.
After having created your site, and verified that this site works by mean of using a browser in order to go to yourname.yoursubdomain.com , create two folders, the first one named âoldforumâ and the second one name ânewforumâ on your hosted account root directory.
Locally on your pc, unpack the two files XXXgz you previously downloaded. Then, use a ftp client in order to upload the content of the PHPBB2 subfolder to the folder you named âoldforumâ and the content of the PHPBB3 subfolder to the folder you named ânewforumâ.
Now, use the tools provided by your website provider in order to create a database and a database user. Give them names you can easily remember, like âmyname_myforumâ.
Using your favourite web browser, go to the subfolder name oldforum of your hosting account, itâs name is probably something like yourname.yoursubdomain.com/oldforum/.
You will see the main screen of the phpbb2 installer. You will be asked for the database name, give the database name you decided when creating the database, the database manager you also decided, and choose the forum administrator name and password for your forum.
Continue the installation until you see that your forum is open and that people can connect and read the standard welcome messages.
Now your new phpbb2 forum is ready. Itâs empty, so itâs ready for receiving your modified backup.


5. MODIFY YOUR âMODIFIED.SQLâ FILE.
We are going to midify your backup, in order to remove unwanted informations.
As a matter of fact, the backup of your current phpbb2 forum at Xisto has some infos concerning the way to connect to the database, as well as the exact URL of your forum programs at your current Xisto forum.
These values are useless for the new forum, because you just replaced them for the values concerning the new location at the empty freshly installed phpbb2 forum.
Use your favourite word processor in order to edit the âmodified.sqlâ backup file. Personally, I use microsoft Word, but you can use any other word processor. You will have to remove eveything concerning the phpbb_config table. Locate the line starting with â# TABLE: phpbb_configâ
Remove everything between this line and the line just before â# TABLE: phpbb_forumsâ. Do not remove the line with phpbb_forums.
By the way, this name âphpbb_configâ is the name with the default prefix name. This is subject to change to something slightly different if you happened to choose another prefix, like âmyforum_â instead of âphpbb_â, you can see it easily when looking for the word âconfigâ in the sql file.
Now you have a backup which has everything except the forum server, database and cookie informations.

6. RELOAD YOUR MODIFIED BACKUP.
These infos are the only ones currently in your new forum location. Log in to the new phpbb2 forum administration panel, and click on âRestore databaseâ. As backup file to be restored, choose the modified.sql file.
Thatâs all, all the infos of your live forum are now in your new site ! You can go to the forum index and see that all your posts are there.

7. INSTALL PHPBB3 ON YOUR NEW WEBSITE.
Open your browser and give the url of the newforum where you downloaded the phpbb3 software. Answer all the questions, including the name of the database, the name of the database administrator and itâs password, the name of the forum admin and his password, as well as the table prefix. Choose phpbb3_ as prefix instead of the standard value of phpbb_ suggested by the install, in order not to have the âtable already existsâ error message during the table creation.

8. MIGRATE YOUR RESTORED DATABASE.
At the end of the phpbb3 standard installation, you will be asked if you want to go live, or if you want to migrate a previous phpbb2 database. Choose the migration option, you will be asked for the location of the phpbb2 forum to be converted, give the path ../oldforum.

9. THATâS ALL.
At the end of the migration process, you will be able to see all your forums in the phpbb3 format. Connect to your new phpbb3 forum, and you will be able to see all the posts from your current phpbb2 forum.

10. CONCLUSION.
As you can verify it now, all your data from your current phpbb2 forum have been migrated to the new site with a phpbb3 forum format. You have been able to backup your forum, test your backup and update it to the newest version.
This is a very important part of the Open world philosophy. The only precious thing is your set of data, the content of the backup. You see that you are able to move it anywhere at any time. Now you do not depend from any hardware, software or hosting provider, you can put your forum on any platform, hosted by any provider on any kind of hardware or operating system, for instance you can move it to your own PC with your own web server.
Because you are free, you will be able to freely choose your hardware and software provider ; and of course you will freely choose to keep going with Xisto because it has the best price/perforcance available today !

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

Filezilla has to be installed. It writes things in the Windows Registry. When you don't want it any more, you have to uninstall it, hoping that this will leave the registry clean.
babiftp doesn't have to be installed, you unpzip the file, run it, and when you finish you remove it and the system is left clean. It's the ideal way for a temporary need.

Probbably some of you have the same annoying problem.
I often have to boot under DOS in order to perform some maintenance things - re-format or re-partition hard disk, do virus diagnostics or recover files.
I love using fdisk, or McAfee viruscan in command line mode. I love typing "fdisk". For that, MS-DOS command line is nice.
Booting from a flashdisk is faster than floppies, and a flashdisk a lots more space than a floppy.
So, now, how to boot from a flashdisk without complicating or dangerous things ?
Here is the way I do it. Of course, I found the trick from several places on the Internet, but nobody gave the step-by-step I needed, that's why I wrote my own one, here it is.
My own USB flashdisk is a Cosk*in 2gb, from http://www.cosk-in.com/
First of all, let's see if your PC is able to boot from a flashdisk.
Let's first power off your PC (correctly shutting down Linux or Crosoft Windows)

1. Testing the hardware.
Insert your USB flashdisk in a USB port, and power on your PC. Then, go to the BIOS SETUP menu (usually it's F2).
Then look at the "BOOT" section. Depending on your BIOS version, have a look at the first boot device, it can be seen as a removable device or a hard disk. Of course, before changing anything here, you must carefully write down the initial settings in order to be able to come back in case of trouble.
If the BIOS sees your flashdisk as a removable device, choose it as first boot device.
If your flashdisk is seen as a disk, you have to put this disk as first disk.

Save your settings and exit.

2) Making the flashdisk bootable.
Now, go to a very old computer running windows 98. I know, sometimes it's rather hard to find one. Personnally, I used a vmware virtual machine on my brand new PC.
When you are on your Windows 98 or Windows Millenium system, download the drivers for your USB flashdisk. This will probably need a reboot.
As soon as your flashdisk drivers are installed, you will be able to see your flashdisk files using Microsoft Windows Explorer. Remember the name of the concerned disk. Let's let's suppose that your USB disk drive name is "U:"
Then, open a command prompt windows (for instance click Run --> Execute --> command)
At the DOS command prompt, type :

SYS U:This "sys u:" command transfers on your USB flashdisk the system files needed for booting your flashdisk, exactly like it would do it on any standard disk. One of this files you probably already know, it's the well-known "command.com" file.
The other files are IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS

That's all. You made your flashdisk bootable. And you already know it's harmless, because you simply added some files to your flashdisk. If you want to go back, simply remove these files.

Now the most interesting thing :

3) Boot from the flashdisk.

Everything is setup. While your system is powered down, insert your USB flashdisk in any free port, and power on your pc.
After a couple of seconds you will see the popular C> prompt. You may type VER in order to verify the version.
That's all you can do at that point. But if you inserted some more files (like format.com or fdisk.com) you have a working ms-dos system.
Further you may add mouse.com, or probably and autoexec.bat or and/or a config.sys file.



4) Discussion.
I love this method because it's simple and harmless. You do almost nothing special on your flashdisk, you just add a couple of files.
I used some other more sophisticated tools from the internet, they started by a flashdisk reformat (and I lost all my favourite files) and then they did not work.
That's why I love this way using an old win95 system and just type "sys U:"

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

Probbably some of you have the same annoying problem.
I often have to boot under DOS in order to perform some maintenance things - re-format or re-partition hard disk, do virus diagnostics or recover files.
I love using fdisk, or McAfee viruscan in command line mode. I love typing "fdisk". For that, MS-DOS command line is nice.
Booting from a flashdisk is faster than floppies, and a flashdisk a lots more space than a floppy.
So, now, how to boot from a flashdisk without complicating or dangerous things ?
Here is the way I do it. Of course, I found the trick from several places on the Internet, but nobody gave the step-by-step I needed, that's why I wrote my own one, here it is.
My own USB flashdisk is a Cosk*in 2gb, from http://www.cosk-in.com/
First of all, let's see if your PC is able to boot from a flashdisk.
Let's first power off your PC (correctly shutting down Linux or Crosoft Windows)

1. Testing the hardware.
Insert your USB flashdisk in a USB port, and power on your PC. Then, go to the BIOS SETUP menu (usually it's F2).
Then look at the "BOOT" section. Depending on your BIOS version, have a look at the first boot device, it can be seen as a removable device or a hard disk. Of course, before changing anything here, you must carefully write down the initial settings in order to be able to come back in case of trouble.
If the BIOS sees your flashdisk as a removable device, choose it as first boot device.
If your flashdisk is seen as a disk, you have to put this disk as first disk.

Save your settings and exit.

2) Making the flashdisk bootable.
Now, go to a very old computer running windows 98. I know, sometimes it's rather hard to find one. Personnally, I used a vmware virtual machine on my brand new PC.
When you are on your Windows 98 or Windows Millenium system, download the drivers for your USB flashdisk. This will probably need a reboot.
As soon as your flashdisk drivers are installed, you will be able to see your flashdisk files using Microsoft Windows Explorer. Remember the name of the concerned disk. Let's let's suppose that your USB disk drive name is "U:"
Then, open a command prompt windows (for instance click Run --> Execute --> command)
At the DOS command prompt, type :

SYS U:This "sys u:" command transfers on your USB flashdisk the system files needed for booting your flashdisk, exactly like it would do it on any standard disk. One of this files you probably already know, it's the well-known "command.com" file.
The other files are IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS

That's all. You made your flashdisk bootable. And you already know it's harmless, because you simply added some files to your flashdisk. If you want to go back, simply remove these files.

Now the most interesting thing :

3) Boot from the flashdisk.

Everything is setup. While your system is powered down, insert your USB flashdisk in any free port, and power on your pc.
After a couple of seconds you will see the popular C> prompt. You may type VER in order to verify the version.
That's all you can do at that point. But if you inserted some more files (like format.com or fdisk.com) you have a working ms-dos system.
Further you may add mouse.com, or probably and autoexec.bat or and/or a config.sys file.



4) Discussion.
I love this method because it's simple and harmless. You do almost nothing special on your flashdisk, you just add a couple of files.
I used some other more sophisticated tools from the internet, they started by a flashdisk reformat (and I lost all my favourite files) and then they did not work.
That's why I love this way using an old win95 system and just type "sys U:"

this means that you have to create a form for that purpose.The form will have an image unique number (for instance last number + 1).The form will have to ask for the image name, which has a default name based on that unique number.Before the upload, the database will store in it's table the image number, it's name, and the complete path, which is the concatenation with the image_number and the image_name, prefixed by /home/users/data/images.A search in the database image names will lead to the image number which will give the path "/home/users/data/images/1250/diving_with_sharks.jpg"

I have the same problem on my rescue computer. I hope that it's not the cpu already dead.

Sorry, but... what is Steam?
I know that if I put heat on water at one end of a pipe, I get steam at the other end, but is that what you are talking about ?

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

We need to know how these F1-12 keys are handled on your computer.Probably a daemon task is running on your computer, trapping these keystokes.If this is the case, simply kill the program and restart it when you stop playing on the computer.And if it's a service, just stop the service.If you have enough cpu and memory, another way could be playing games on a virtual machine hosted on the same computer. So, you don't need to change your physical computer settings. Should work, when you will be on the virtual system the F1-F12 keys should be passed to the virtual OS, and not to the physical system.

Huh ? Which administrator account? The workgroup administrator account?Then, the answer is simple : restore the backup on the system hosting the workgroup administor account.

I tested the portable version from http://portableapps.com/apps/office/abiword_portable , it works fine with windows XP. And as it's a portable version, no install, so no compatibility version with Open Office.
Besides this, it has it's own document format, so probably OpenOffice will not directly read the documents, you have to save the documents in a compatible format.

Which Operating system are we talking about, here? Windows XP ? Linux?

Hi, salih,
You have to register in order to access the private message system.

Huh ? Which administrator account? The workgroup administrator account?Then, the answer is simple : restore the backup on the system hosting the workgroup administor account.

A little bit history.
 
Long, long time ago, a Personal Computer (today named a PC) was sold together with the operating system media (MS-DOS, then Win95, then Win98, Win Millenium, Win XP). At this moment, standard home users felt themselves somehow lost, but skilled people knew that they had to partition the hard disk in order to smartly install the operating systems.
Today, the home PC’s are usually sold with the operating system pre-installed. The computer is ready to use, which is a good point for newbies, but most of the settings are not the best choice for a further safe use.
 
What we will do today.
 
As it has been delivered pre-installed, the computer can be used immediately. However, with this initial setup, you have no chance to correctly perform a backup.
Two different types of backup are necessary for a smart user : a backup of your data, for instance on a removable media (USB disk or DVDRW); and a backup of the operating system.
A backup of your own data has to be done frequently : the pictures you removed from your camera and stored on your PC should not disappear if your PC receives a virus.
This operation is usually very fast, because your real data do not use a lot of space on your computer. And the movies you have already seen can be moved to an external drive.
A system backup has to be done each time you do a change to your system, typically once a year. A system backup copies the whole system disk to a removable media, in order to restore the operating system from the backup media.
 
If everything is on a single disk (typically the “C:” disk) you have to backup the whole C: disk, on a bootable media, which takes a huge amount of time.
That’s why we will split your physical disk into several partitions, in order to have a small system partition having only the operating system and your installed software, and a data partition which will have all your personal data.

The recovery media.
 
If when ordering your computer you did not purchase the recovery media, before touching anything, you should create the recovery media.
There is a somewhere menu for that, usually the click sequence is start, all programs, recovery media. The recovery media can be a USB flashdisk or a DVD.
I had a DVD burner attached to my PC, so I created recovery DVD’s. This operation needed four blank DVD’s. Now, in case of trouble, I should be able to restore the system to it’s manufactory settings. Be careful, restoring the manufactory settings will destroy the whole disk, erasing all your personal data. This is only the “last chance” rescue disk.

First of all, backup!
 
Now start the real job. Before touching anything, the first thing is to create a backup of your system disk. In case of trouble, you will be able to restore your system to it’s current poing.
For instance if you install something bad, or you removed an essential software you absolutely need, simply restore your c: disk.
I used Clonezilla (http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ), the free system backup I recommend to everybody. Download the iso file, burn it to a CDRW or a CDR. I often use CDRW’s because there are several steps involving several iso files, so this costs me a single media.
If you have a second disk, I recommend performing the backup on the second disk.
If you only have one disk, you should first shrink your c: disk in order to manage some place free, and then create a partition and format it. For such a small job, the Windows disk manager can do the job.
Now, boot on your CloneZilla CD, and perform your backup.
Here below is the Clonezilla splash boot creen, accept the defaut boot settings :
 

 
Choose device-device, local device, beginner mode, and then save_local_partitions_as_an_image
This will perform a partition-to-file backup, and as source choose your system partition, it’s probably the “sd2” or “sd3” disk, you can see it when considering the partition sizes.
If you are not familiar with system backup, here is a tutorial for clonezilla :
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Secondly, shrink the c: disk
 
The c: disk is generally far too big. Our current goal is to make this disk as small as possible. The c: disk has to be big enough for all your basic software, but no more.
Using Windows explorer, have a look at the “properties” of your c: disk.
For instance, my c: disk is a 2 terabytes disk, of which 50 gigs are used. 2000 gigs currently, and 50 gigs used. A lot of space is wasted, because I don’t want to put anything important on my c: disk. So, I will choose a more reasonable size. I decided 200 gigs for the c: disk, leaving 1800 gigs for my personal data, texts, spreadsheets, pictures, and system backups.
Now we need partitioning software. I use gparted for my partitioning purposes, it has a livecd and/or liveusb version, take it from here:
http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/
Download the gparted livecd for instance, and burn it on a CDRW. Boot on the gparted disk, here below is shown the splash screen.
 

 
When the boot is finished, you will see the gparted main screen. Click in the system partition, on my image here bolow it’s the /dev/sda2 partition, you will see the resizing window.

 
Use the mouse to shrink the partition, reasonably larger than the “yellow” used size.

Create the new partition
 
Now you can boot your Windows system from the hard disk. As the disk has been modified, Windows will probably ask you to reboot.
As we have created a free space on our disk, we can use the Microsoft Disk Manager (right-click on my computer, and choose manage) in order to create a partition on the free space, and format it in NTFS format. This newly formatted disk will probably be your “d:” disk.

Almost finished.
 
Now you have to learn how to work with two disks. Remember that your C: disk is a “danger” disk, it can catch a virys at any time and it will disappear during repair.
Your “D:” disk is your safe data disk.
So, create a “d:\data” folder on your D: disk, and change your Microsoft Office (or other wordprocessing environment) settings in order that d:\data is the default storage place.
So, each time you create a document, it will be saved in the d: disk.
Also, change your browser settings so that they save the downloaded files and pictures in the d: disk, for instance in d:\download.
 
Going live.
 
Now you are ready for going live.
Monthly, perform a system backup off your c: disk. Name your first backup backup1, the second one backup2. On month three, remove backup1 and create backup3.
So, in case of problem, like new driver giving bad results or virus successful attack, simply restore the last backup. If the last backup is unusable, m-1 backup is still there.
And on a daily basis perform a backup of your data disk. A lot of software’s are available for performing differential backup, but you can create your own one in a very simple way.
Let’s say that your photos are in a folder named \photos, and your spreadsheet and word processor data in a folder named \data. These data are very precious, and if you have a hardware failure, you really need to have them immediately available, that’s why I recommend a daily backup for this, let’s say just before poweroff your PC.
Create a text file named “dailybackup.bat”, with the following lines :
 

dir j:@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo please check that the USB device is available@echo You must see no errors in the "dir" above@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@pause@cls@mkdir j:\backups\photos 2>nul@mkdir j:\backups\data 2>nulxcopy e:\photos j:\backups\photos /E /D /Yxcopy e:\data j:\backups\data /E /D /Y@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@echo Backup job finished@echo @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@PauseLet’s suppose that your data disk is the “E:” disk, and that your USB external disk is the J: disk.The first “dir” allows checking that your USB disk is connected.
Then come some “mkdir” in order to create the folder structure on the destination disk.
And then you see the “xcopy” command line which copies all the photos from \photos and all the data from \data.
What is nice, is the “/D” option. This option will tell xcopy to save only the “new” files, and “/Y” will accept replacing the existing destination files by the recently modified ones.
There is a “pause” at the end allowing you to see the results before closing the window.
When you run this script for the first time you will see a lot of copied files (you probably have a lot of pictures in the \photos folder).
If you run the script a second time, you will see it working very fast, nothing copied because no newer file exists in the source folder.
Create a new .doc or .xls or .txt file in the \data folder of your internal disk, and double-click the “dailybackup.bat” script, you will see a single file being backed up, the last file you created. All the other ones are not copied because they are already present on your backup media.
So, you have a perfect and very fast script for your daily backup .
Now you are ready for real life, do not forget to do your daily backup of your personal data, and a monthly system backup, and you are ready to recover from any problem.

My last problem arrived after five years of home PC usage, and I had no backup. Please, don’t be as stupid as I was!

could be your neighbours wifi, should be obvious from the name of the network recognized by your adapter... unless there are mysterious ghost wifi signals lurking around the place?why not just turn off your wifi when this happens? does your laptop have a wifi on/off switch or function key?

Yes, SSH is still available as an addon albeit a paid one.. 11.88 USD per year or 0.99 per month

As for the commands, I find VI icky... Sorry but somehow my brain could never comprehend vim ever..I actually prefer nano over them all, simple and straightforward.

I too prefer the command line over FTP but that is mainly because I am lazy

Personally, perks of command line for me include things like mass permissions change / ownership correction.. Debugging & executing files without the need of a browser .. And the LOGS!!! All those pretty lines of garbled text waiting just for you to read through, always makes me happy

I think all linux administrators would unanimously agree about grep.. One of the most useful search tools... Essential for logs and searching through files

@mastercomputers I think along with those tutorials, you should also cover aspects like creating an error log and reading / understand them.. Personally, I have been dying to write a topic about creating a Virtual Private Server from scratch BUT it requires time that I don't have enough to spare :