Back Up My Computer

anotheruser

**Sigh**

closed wrote: »

It takes around 15 seconds to kick off an image backup, and a couple of minutes to kick off a restore from backup, nothing complicated at all.

Backing up Windows is great but when you have many tens of thousands of files to backup with it, I can assure you no machine would take "a couple of minutes".

closed wrote: »

Backing up after you've messed up a machine is obviously going to be fruitless.

The average user probably won't realise until it's too late.

closed wrote: »

Your assumption that reputable dealers supply a windows disc is well out of date, as is your statement about imgburn

I don't think so. So if the average user messes up Windows, they have to take the PC back to the store? Where the hell do you buy computers from? It's one of the only places in computing I see physical media still given out.

closed wrote: »

Latest version of imgburn, as of 30 minutes ago, 8 different AV products detected unwanted bloat.

But how many detected it is fine?
We usually go with the majority in this country, like voting politicians and such).

But then I would never trust some website to detect "threats" in a program and most online scanners throw up false-positives in any case. Please, install ImgBurn then tell me the location of the "bloat". But the link also shows how inaccurate many anti-virus scanners are... hence a greater number of programs detecting that there is no bloat. In addition, as there is no clear definition of what "un-wanted bloat" is, it's difficult to say either way.
A program calling home to say where it's been installed / what version it is / if there's an update could be considered crap-ware but on the whole, it's actually being helpful.

closed wrote: »

There's half a dozen threads just on this front techie page of mse, some of which have been going on for days, if the op's had a clean image backup, they would be working happily now.

Yep, but if the user installed something, then a week later decided to do their weekly backup. A few days after that, the user decides their PC is running too slow and restores the backup, they won't be solving the problem, assuming the piece of software wasn't the best.

Backing up files or telling your backup program to copy certain files only is the only way to combat this, unless your machine isn't connected to the internet and you don't install programs on it.

Plus, most people think they are some sort of IT guru these days. A work colleague does, but then they call the wallpaper a screensaver.

No doubt you will gloss over this and decide it's a load of rubbish but I'm not bothering to come back as I'll keep going over the same points, which you see to want to fight without seeing any other point of view but your own.

closed

Someone asked how to backup, my answer was how to do it properly. Why you are trying to pick holes in it I have no idea. I've already explained why image backups are a good idea.

There's an alternative point of view, which is perfectly valid ... and there's poor advice.

You are arguing with someone who has seen the results of a non existent or poor backup strategy many times

The imgburn argument is futile, who knows more about unwanted toolbars, malwarebytes/trend/eset, or you? Read up on it

http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?/forum/9-imgburn-general/

it used to be bloat free, it isn't now.

I don't claim to be an IT guru.

Knarf44

Don't want to get involved in the merits of one type of backup regime over another but just this week I had a friend come to me again having been infected with a virus.

I had completely restored this person's laptop just last week replacing a dodgy illegal version of Win Vista installed by a "repair shop" (despite the laptop having a valid Windows Vista HP licence). Anyway once everything was bang up to date as it can be for Vista I took the precaution of making an image of the disk before returning the laptop to them. Luckily for him I did as I was able to restore his laptop in around 20 minutes using an image file created by AOMEI's Windows Backupper. Saved a lot of messing around and the only file they lost was the torrent program that they had downloaded.