Backup - as if your computer's life depends on it

Because it does.

Each infected machine that enters our lab shows an increasing level of corruption and with that, a decreasing confidence that a "cleanup" can be truly efficacious. This unhappy process has lead us to grudgingly admit that Microsoft's "backup and reload" strategy is correct.

Microsoft ships a couple of backup tools with Windows - "Backup" and "FAST - File and Settings Transfer Wizard". They may be worse than nothing (I've tried them both) as they can lead to false confidence that a restoration is possible from their output. Fortunately, Microsoft offers the download of an "industrial strength" solution - USMT (the User State Migration Tool). Microsoft warns that the tool is intended for IT "Professionals", but at its simplest, it is suitable for courageous users and it can save the files in a structure that allows you to browse the contents of the backup. (The proof of the pudding.)

The first issue is having a place to put the backup. Hard drives have gotten large and users have discovered music and video and managed to use a lot of drive space. Most users can get by with an external drive of about the same size as their hard drive. These have gotten downright cheap. I paid about $100 for the 320GB Iomega I bought a year ago. A comparable Toshiba drive costs less that half that at Walmart. (And if you buy through that link, we will get about $2.50 as a tip for a tip.)

For the most part, installation is a matter of plugging it in. Windows will detect the drive and ask you what you want to do with it. All you need at this point is the drive letter and you can get that "exploring" the files. Next, you need the USMT installer (that is the USMT link above). which you "run". That installs the software (on XP) in "Program Files". Now for the really frightening part, click Start, Run and type "cmd". That opens a "black" window where you type in commands instead of clicking icons. It will put you in the wrong place but you can get to the right place by typing "cd c:pro[tab]USMT[tab]. If your install worked you can type "dir" and watch the names of the files whiz by including, (If you didn't blink at the wrong time), "scanstate.exe".

My computer is named "hans" because in a former incarnation, he was a Gateway "Solo" and my IOMEGA USB drive is "G". Figuring out how to modify the following command is left as an exercise.

scanstate g:\hans /i:miguser.xml /i:migapp.xml /o /nocompress

Browsing through "g:\hans" reminds me that "clutter is the enemy of sanity". Maybe next time I'll clean house first.

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