Preparation and Troubleshooting

Your PC can be quite moody. One day, all the components run fine and all tasks proceed without a glitch. The next day, your mouse pointer won't budge, your printer refuses to print a document, Windows locks up, your PC refuses to connect to the Internet, or valuable documents simply disappear.

This tutorial won't transform you into a professional PC technician, but with a little practice and a lot of patience, you should be able to solve the most common problems and even help your friends with their PC woes.

Backing Up and Restoring Files

Your PC's hard drive may be very reliable, but it's not totally immune to virus attacks, hardware malfunctions, or human error. Because of this, you should back up all the files on your PC, or at least the files you can't reasonably recover without a backup-data files, e-mail messages and addresses, digital photos, your video or music collection, and so on.

Purchasing an external hard drive for your PC and backing up all your irreplaceable files to the external hard drive at least once a week. If you go on a trip, take the backups with you and leave the originals at home, or vice versa. (If you don't have an external hard drive, you can back up files to recordable CDs or DVDs or an internal hard drive.)

Backing Up Files

Take the following steps to back up files with Windows Backup's recommended settings:

1. Click Start, All Programs, Maintenance, Backup and Restore.
2. Under Backup, do one of the following:
   • If this is the first time you're running Windows Backup and Restore, click Set up backup and then proceed to Step 3 to enter your backup settings.
   • If you already entered your backup settings and want to use those same settings, click Back up now.
   • If you already entered your backup settings and want to use different settings, click Change settings and proceed with Step 3.
3. Click the drive you want to use to store your backup files and click Next. (Backing up to recordable DVDs or a removable hard drive so you can store your backup in a safe location away from your PC.)
4. When asked "What do you want to back up?" do one of the following:
   • Click Let Windows choose (recommended) and click Next so Windows can decide which files to back up-all data files saved in libraries, on the desktop, or in Windows default folders. Windows also creates a system image that you can use to restore your PC if it stops working.
   • Click Let me choose, use the resulting dialog box to choose the folders and files you want included in the backup, and click Next. (Use this option if you store your data files in folders outside the Windows libraries and default folders-for example, in a folder named C:\Data.)
5. Click Save settings and run backup. (You can stop the backup operation at any time by clicking View Details and then clicking Stop backup and Stop backup again to confirm.)

If you choose to select what to back up, selecting items is the only tricky part. If you click the check box next to a drive or folder that's not expanded (in other words, you can't see the folders below the drive letter or the subfolders below a folder), you select everything on the drive or in the folder. To select specific folders or files, first click the arrow to the left of the drive letter or folder in which the items are stored. This expands the listing for the selected file or folder. You can then select individual files or folders.

As you modify files included in your backup, Windows either adds those files to your backup the next time you perform a backup or automatically backs up files according to the schedule settings. This ensures that you have up-to-date backups.