I have a Maxvision PC with XP Home that has become unbootable twice in the last year, both times from a power outage. The first time I didn't have time to diagnose it and try a recovery, so I did a format and started over since there's a second D drive for all my data. I put a UPS on the computer and purchased Norton Ghost, but was a bit afraid to try to make a ghost partition due to some bad things I had been reading on the subject. Of course, the system became unbootable once again last week during an aborted shutdown where I had to force the power supply off after waiting 20 minutes of lockup, but this time I see the system32\config\system file has been corrupted. Chkdsk only says there are unrecoverable errors. I went ahead and renamed the system file as bad and copied in a new file from \repair\system, but now all I get is an attempted start and continual reboot. Is there anything else I can do to recover? If I boot from the XP CD and attempt to refresh the OS it gives me a message that Windows is too corrupted to recover the system info and prompts me to do a whole new install. I'm trying to avoid a total re-groove again. Any suggestions?
Once I get this up and running what's the best way to make a fully recoverable backup? I've heard that making a bootable CD-R and loading the "ghost" image onto a separate USB hard disc would be best. Does that sound feasable. Also, some other postings on this site recommend programs other than Norton to make a backup image, so what's out there?
BTW: This is a MaxVision computer with totally separate drives for the boot and music info, but I'll carry anything with me to have a way to quickly recover from another crash like this. A USB hard drive and CD-R boot disc for backup seems the best way, but any other suggestions?
Once I get this up and running what's the best way to make a fully recoverable backup? I've heard that making a bootable CD-R and loading the "ghost" image onto a separate USB hard disc would be best. Does that sound feasable. Also, some other postings on this site recommend programs other than Norton to make a backup image, so what's out there?
BTW: This is a MaxVision computer with totally separate drives for the boot and music info, but I'll carry anything with me to have a way to quickly recover from another crash like this. A USB hard drive and CD-R boot disc for backup seems the best way, but any other suggestions?