Microsoft Press Windows Vista Administrator's Pocket Consultant ebook

by MS

  Caution

  These are called program name installation restore points instead of program uninstall restore points for a very good reason. The restore process doesn't uninstall all the application files. It removes file and registry settings that might affect the operation of the computer. To completely uninstall a program, you'll need to use the Programs tool in Control Panel.

  Automatic update restore points Created prior to applying an automatic update. If a computer has problems after applying an automatic update, you can use the restore point to recover the computer to its previous state. (You can also use the Programs tool to remove automatic updates.)

  Restore operation restore points Created prior to restoring a computer. If you find that you went back to the wrong restore point or that the restore point doesn't work, you can use these restore points to undo the restore operation and recover the computer to its state before you reversed the previous settings.

  Unsigned device driver restore points Created prior to installation of an unsigned or uncertified driver on a computer. If a computer has problems after installing an unsigned or uncertified driver, you can use these restore points to restore the computer to its state before you installed the driver. For signed and certified drivers, the normal rollback procedure should allow you to go back to the previous driver being used.

  Microsoft Backup tool recovery restore points Created prior to recovering files or system data using the Backup tool. If the recovery fails or if the computer doesn't work properly after the recovery, you can undo the changes and restore the computer to its previous state.

  Users can also create snapshots manually. These snapshots are called manual restore points. You should recommend that users create snapshots prior to performing any operation that could cause problems on the system.

  You can restore computers when they are running in normal mode or safe mode. In normal mode, a restore operation restore point is created prior to restoration of the computer. But in safe mode, the restore operation restore point is not created because changes you make in safe mode aren't tracked and you can't undo them using restore points. However, you can use safe mode to restore any previously created restore point.

  Creating Manual Restore Points

  You can create a manual restore point by following these steps:

  Open Backup And Recovery Center. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click the Backup Your Computer link under the System And Maintenance heading.

  In the Backup And Restore Center, click Create A Restore Point Or Change Settings under Tasks.

  Select the disk for which you want to create the restore point and then click Create.

  Enter a description for the restore point, such as Prior To Display—Monitor Driver Update And Changes. Click Create.

  When the create operation completes, click OK.

  Recovering from Restore Points

  To recover a computer from a restore point, follow these steps:

  Open Backup And Recovery Center. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click the Backup Your Computer link under the System And Maintenance heading.

  Select Repair Windows Using System Restore under Tasks.

  The Restore System Files And Settings page has two options:

  q Recommended Restore The Recommended Restore option is selected by default. If you want to undo the most recent update, driver, or software installation, choose this option and then click Next.

  q Choose A Different Restore Point If you want to recover the computer to a specific point in time, choose this option and then click Next. On the Choose A Restore Point page, restore points are listed by date, time, and description. Click the restore point that you want to use and then click Next.

  Click Finish. When prompted, click Yes to confirm that you want to restore the computer's system files and settings using the selected restore point.

  During the restoration, System Restore shuts down Windows Vista. After the restore is complete, Windows Vista is restarted using the settings from the date and time of the snapshot. After the system restarts, the System Restore dialog box is displayed again. Read the message provided and then click Close. If Windows Vista isn't working properly, you can apply a different restore point or reverse the restore operation by repeating this procedure and selecting the restore operation that was created prior to applying the current system state.

  Creating and Using a Backup

  Windows Vista includes Backup Recovery And Restore Center and the Backup Status And Configuration utility. You can use either tool to automate backups and to create a complete backup of a computer. You must have appropriate permissions to back up and restore files on a computer.

  Automating Backups of Essential Files

  Automated backups are used to periodically back up pictures, music, videos, e-mail, documents, and other types of important files. The computer must be turned on at the scheduled run time for automated backups to work. You can configure automated backups by following these steps:

  Open Backup And Recovery Center. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click the Backup Your Computer link under the System And Maintenance heading.

  Select Change Settings under Backup Files Or Your Entire Computer.

  If you haven't previously configured automated backups, click Set Up Automatic File Backup. Otherwise, click Change Backup Settings.

  On the Where Do You Want To Save Your Backup page, use the options provided to specify a backup location on a local disk, a CD/DVD drive, or on the network and then click Next.

  On the Which File Types Do You Want To Back Up page, select the types of files to back up. You can configure backing up pictures, music, videos, e-mail, documents, TV shows, or compressed files by selecting or clearing the related check boxes. Select Additional Files to back up any additional files that do not fit in the defined categories. System files, program files, and temporary files are never backed up regardless of your selections.

  On the How Often Do You Want To Create A Backup page, use the options provided to set the desired backup schedule. The How Often selection list lets you choose Daily, Weekly, or Monthly as the run schedule. If you choose a weekly or monthly run schedule, you'll need to set the day of the week or month to run using the What Day selection list. Finally, the What Time selection list lets you set the time of the day when automated backup should occur.

  To create the initial backup and save the backup schedule, click Save Settings And Start Backup. When prompted to confirm, click Yes.

  Once you've configured automated backups, you can run a backup manually using the settings. Simply open Backup And Recovery Center and click Backup Files. To modify the run schedule or to disable automated backups, follow these steps:

  Open Backup And Recovery Center. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click the Backup Your Computer link under the System And Maintenance heading.

  Select Change Settings under Backup Files Or Your Entire Computer.

  If you want to change the backup settings, select Change Backup Settings and then complete steps 4–7 of the previous procedure.

  If you want to disable automated backups, click Turn Off.

  You can recover files you've backed up by following these steps:

  Open Backup And Recovery Center. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click the Backup Your Computer link under the System And Maintenance heading.

  In Backup And Recovery Center, click Restore Files.

  On the What Do You Want To Restore page, select Files From The Latest Backup or Files From An Older Backup as appropriate and then click Next.

  Follow the prompts to complete the restore.

  Performing Complete Computer Backups

  Complete PC Backup creates a backup image of the entire computer and everything needed to completely restore it. You can start a Complete PC Backup by following these steps:

  Open Backup And Recovery Center. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click the Backup Your Computer link under
the System And Maintenance heading.

  In Backup And Recovery Center, click Back Up Computer.

  On the Where Do You Want To Save The Backup page, use the options provided to specify a backup location, preferably on removable media, and then click Next. Compressed hard disks cannot be used for Complete PC backups.

  On the Which Disks Do You Want To Include In The Backup page, the computer's system drive is selected by default. You cannot change this selection, but you can add other drives to the backup image by selecting the related check boxes. Click Next to continue.

  Click Start Backup to start the backup.

  Once you've created a Complete PC Backup, you can use it to recover the computer completely by following these steps:

  Shut down the computer.

  Turn on the computer and hold F8 during startup.

  Windows Complete PC Restore should be available as a recovery option. Click this option and then follow the prompts.

  If the recovery option is not available, you can begin recovery using the following procedure:

  Insert the Windows Vista installation disk and then restart the computer.

  On the initial screen, click Recovery Options.

  Click Windows Complete PC Restore and then follow the prompts.

  Troubleshooting Startup and Shutdown

  As an administrator, you'll often need to troubleshoot problems with startup and shutdown. The sections that follow look at techniques for resolving common problems.

  Resolving Restart or Shutdown Issues

  Normally, you can shut down or restart Windows Vista by clicking Start, clicking the Options button to the right of the power and lock buttons, and then clicking Restart or Shut Down as appropriate. Sometimes, however, Windows Vista won't shut down or restart normally and you must take additional actions. In those cases, follow these steps:

  Press Ctrl+Alt+Del. The Windows screen should display. If so, click Start Task Manager.

  On the Application tab, look for an application that is not responding. If all programs appear to be running normally, skip to step 5.

  Select the application that is not responding and then click End Task.

  If the application fails to respond to the request, you'll see a prompt that allows you to end the application immediately or cancel the end-task request. Click End Now.

  Try shutting down or restarting the computer. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del, click the Options button to the right of the power and lock buttons, and then click Restart or Shut Down as appropriate.

  Real World

  As a last resort, you might be forced to perform a hard shutdown by pressing and holding the computer's power button or by unplugging the computer. If you do this, Check Disk will probably run the next time you start the computer. This allows the computer to check for errors and problems that might have been caused by the hard shutdown. If Check Disk doesn't run automatically, you might want to run it manually.

  Reinstalling Windows Vista

  When you cannot recover Windows any other way, your final recovery option is to reinstall Windows Vista with the repair option. This option tells Windows to reinstall the base operating system over the existing installation. The repair and reinstall shouldn't affect user settings, so any programs that were previously installed and any data should remain intact—in most cases.

  To reinstall Windows Vista with the repair option, follow these steps:

  Insert the Windows Vista CD into the appropriate drive and then restart the computer.

  When the Setup program begins, do not select any of the repair options. Instead, press Enter to start setup normally.

  Press F8 to accept the license agreement. Windows Vista will then search your system for existing Windows installations.

  On the screen showing your existing Windows installation, press R to start the repair process.

  The remainder of this procedure follows the same steps you would take if performing a clean install of the operating system. (See the "Installing and Running Windows Vista" section of Chapter 1, "Introduction to Windows Vista Administration.") When Setup finishes, the system files will be refreshed, and the existing user settings and data should be available.

  Note

  Keep in mind that the repair process cannot repair a damaged disk. If the file system is defective, you might need to reformat the disk and then perform a clean install of the operating system. If the disk itself is defective, you will need to replace the disk and then install the operating system.

  Making Sense of Stop Errors

  The "Configuring System Startup and Recovery" section in Chapter 2 details how to configure Windows Vista to write debugging information. If a major error occurs while Windows Vista is starting, installing a program, or performing another operation, you'll see a Stop error message across the entire screen. Read this information carefully and write down the following information:

  Error name The error name should be on the third line of the error screen and is listed in all caps, such as KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR.

  Troubleshooting recommendations The error name is followed by the troubleshooting recommendations. These recommendations are based on the type of error that occurred and provide general guidelines on resolving the problem.

  Error number The troubleshooting recommendations are followed by technical information. On the next line after the Technical Information heading, you'll see the word STOP, an error number, and a list of error parameters. The error number following STOP is what you should write down, such as STOP: 0X00000050.

  Driver information Immediately following the line with the Stop error number is a line that lists the name of the driver associated with the error. This information is only provided if the error can be traced to a specific driver. Write down the driver name.

  If the system is configured to write an event to the event logs if a Stop error occurs and it was possible to write the event before the system crashed completely, the error number and error parameters will be written to an event in the System log with an event source of Save Dump. The event will also specify if a dump file was created and where it was saved if applicable.

  Real World

  Windows Vista includes an Online Crash Analysis feature that allows you to send the dump file to Microsoft Product Support Services. If error reporting is enabled, you will be prompted to send this debugging information to Microsoft when you restart the system. You have the option of sending the debugging information anonymously or using your Microsoft Connect account. If you send the debugging information with your name and contact information through Microsoft Connect, a technician might contact you for further information and might also be able to suggest an action to correct the problem. You can manually upload crash information via the Microsoft Online Crash Analysis Web site (http://www.oca.microsoft.com/). The site also lets you track the status of your issue, and you can check for a diagnosis.

  Once you have the Stop error information, you might need to start the system in safe mode as discussed in the "Repairing a Computer to Enable Startup" section of this chapter. You can then look to resolving the problem by performing the following tasks:

  Look up the Stop error on the Microsoft Knowledge Base Visit http://www.support.microsoft.com and perform a search of the Microsoft Knowledge Base using the error number as the keyword. If a known problem is related to the error code, you should find a related Knowledge Base article. As appropriate, follow the instructions given to resolve the issue.

  Check the driver (if driver information was provided) When you reboot the system, check the driver to ensure it is digitally signed. If the driver has been updated recently, you might need to consider rolling back to the previous driver version. Just because the driver is listed doesn't mean the driver is corrupt and needs replacing, however. The Stop error could have been caused by other factors.

  Determine what has changed recently Stop errors can be caused by both hardware and software. Closely review any programs or hardware that have been installed
recently on the computer. If you added new hardware, check to ensure that the hardware is installed correctly; that the latest, signed drivers are installed; and that the hardware is properly configured. If you added new software, check to make sure the installation completed successfully. You might also want to check for updates or patches to the software.

  Check system resources Stop errors can occur if the system gets critically low on RAM or disk space. Once you get the system started, check the drives to determine the amount of free space available and, as necessary, free additional disk space using Disk Cleanup or other tools. Also open the Task Manager. (In a domain, press Ctrl+Alt+Del and click Task Manager; in a workgroup, simply press Ctrl+Alt+Del.) Look at the Performance tab to check the amount of physical and virtual RAM available. If very little memory is available, determine which programs are using memory and whether there are problem programs, such as adware or spyware, running.

  Repair system files Stop errors can be caused by damaged or improper versions of system files. If you suspect a system file as being the cause of the problem and the system won't boot properly, you might need to repair the operating system or reinstall the operating system using the repair options as discussed in the "Repairing a Computer to Enable Startup" section of this chapter.

  Check hardware and BIOS Stop errors can be caused by faulty hardware. If a computer frequently crashes, you might want to examine the hardware closely. Check the hardware drivers first; a driver might be causing the Stop errors. Check the physical hardware. Look specifically at the hard disks, RAM, CPU, and the graphics card. A hard drive might be going bad, RAM might be defective, the CPU might have overheated, or the graphics card might be incompatible with Windows Vista. Also look at the basic input/output system (BIOS). Check the settings carefully. You might need to see whether an update is available from the motherboard manufacturer.