HELP!!! I'm in trouble.
I am confused, totally lost, don't have a
weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue
about some just crucial points about
NTBACKUP and XP Professional.
Twice now in the last 12 months I have had
a bad virus ruin my main XP installation
(bootable XP disk partition). After the
first virus infection, I started using
NTBACKUP to make backups of that bootable
partition.
After the second virus, I discovered that
using NTBACKUP to restore any of those
earlier backups would not yield a bootable
partition. I was SHOCKED. My backups
appear to be totally useless. All that
promise of 'volume shadow copy' (VSS)
appears to have been for nothing.
Now I'm just guessing, and I don't have a
second computer to run some long list of
combinatorial experiments to see what does
and does not work.
In more detail, my PC has an EIDE hard
disk for drive 0 and, in addition, has two
SATA drives. Drive 0 has partitions C:,
D:, and E:.
Since my copy of XP Professional is an
upgrade from Windows 2000, I have Windows
2000 installed on partition C:.
I try to keep a good installation on XP on
each of partitions D: and E:.
In January, E: was my main XP
installation, that is, the one I usually
use, and then I got a virus that ruined my
installation on E:. Then I spent three
months, more than full time, getting E:
back to ready for work again. Then in
April, with E: booted, I used NTBACKUP
with VSS to backup all of E: to a BKF file
on I:.
Then recently a second virus again ruined
my installation of E:. [With great
effort, I restrain remarks about system
security architecture, ACLs, sand boxes,
browser plug-ins, etc.]
So, I booted XP on D:, formatted E: back
to empty (and for NTFS as it had been),
and used NTBACKUP to restore the April
backup of E: to E:. The number of files
NTBACKUP reported as restored were two
fewer than the number NTBACKUP had
reported as being saved; I do not
understand the difference.
After this restore, E: would not boot; an
error message said that file ntoskrnl.exe
was missing. With D: booted, on D: I
found such a file, of the same size as had
been on E:, and copied it, as a binary
copy, to its standard directory in the
file system directory tree on E:, and E:
still would not boot; this time the
message had to do with some
DLLs missing.
With D: booted, I formatted E: to empty
and for NTFS (as usual), installed XP on
E: and, with D: booted, used NTBACKUP to
read the April backup and restore it to E:
WITHOUT replacing files with duplicate
names. Then E: booted but showed only the
what was from the XP installation and
nothing more from what I had on E: at the
time of the backup. Then I used NTBACKUP
to read the April backup and restore to E:
WITH replacing files with duplicate names.
Then E: booted but again showed nothing
more from what I had on E: at the time of
the backup. As far as I can tell, my
April backup was just a total waste of
time and effort and yielded a big file
that is just useless for anything.
Bummer.
Okay, apparently (I'm guessing) when I did
the April backup of all of E:, NTBACKUP
refused to backup ALL of E:, omitted some
files, and didn't tell me. Bummer. So,
apparently the backup I got in April
cannot be used to create a bootable
partition. Bummer. Difficult way to
learn.
So, I'm guessing: In the run of NTBACKUP,
to get a backup that can be restored and
result in a bootable partition like I had,
I must backup the whole partition and ALSO
ask to backup 'system state'. Well for
the April backup I just asked to backup
the whole partition and did not also ask
to backup system state.
My guess in April was that asking to
backup 'system state' would result in
backing up ONLY 'system state' and not the
whole partition while asking to backup the
whole partition would backup everything,
including system state. I was guessing.
Q 1: Is there any way now I can make good
use of my April backup of E:?
Q 2: For the future, suppose either D: or
E: is booted with XP and I run NTBACKUP to
backup all of E: AND system state. Can I
later boot D:, format E: (for NTFS as
usual), use NTBACKUP to restore E:, and
have E: bootable again and as it was?
Q 3: Suppose I use the 'automatic system
recovery' (ASR) process to get a backup of
E: and an ASR diskette and then use the
ASR diskette and the backup to restore E:.
The ASR documentation is less clear than
mud turned into rock and implies that this
restoration would repartition my drive 0,
reformat partitions C:, D:, and E:, and,
thus, destroy what I have on C: and D:.
Is this true? Or could I use the ASR
process to restore JUST partition E:
without changing partitions C: and D:?
Q 4: The ASR process documentation seems
to imply, but is not at all clear, that
the backup process would necessarily make
copies of my system state on ALL of my
bootable drives, C:, D:, and E: and, in
any restore, restore system state on all
those drives. Is this true?
Q 5: Also the ASR documentation seems to
imply, but is not clear, that the ASR
process would restore only a minimal part
of a bootable partition and not restore
the partition fully as it was at the time
of backup. Is this true?
Net, what I would like would be to be able
to use NTBACKUP to backup my usual
bootable partition E: and later boot D:
and use NTBACKUP to restore E: back to
where it was, yes, as a bootable partition
and in full as the partition was at the
time of backup, and do so without doing
harm to partitions C: and D:. How can I
use NTBACKUP to do this?
This system management struggling is
seriously hurting my development project
and my ability to become a very good
customer of high end copies of Windows
Server and SQL Server. Net, this year I
will have spent fully one-third of my time
JUST wrestling with reinstalling XP. This
time I want to get this wrestling BEHIND
me.
HELP!!! I'm in trouble.
