It seems a little of everything is in Windows 7. It is a jack of all trades, but as usual no matter how hard they try, Windows 7 is a master of NONE.
Start > Search > system repair disc will bring up a utility to burn a custom WinPE type environment meant for fixin’ probs. It appears though that you have to load any custom hard disk controller drivers each time you boot up the disk, (and I *assume* you can use a flash drive but haven’t tried yet) though I’m sure we’ll find a way to rig up the image and re-burn in the future. Options on the disk after bootup include:
- an automatic startup repair for systems that don’t start,
- system restore, of course
- the latest Microsoft ram diag tool
- command prompt – where you can use assorted recovery tools (sorry folks, no explorer-like gui)
- system image restore! wha? Yes, if you used Windows 7 to create a backup image, then you can restore it here!
So how about the backup? Well, Start > Search > backup will take you there. Here you can configure backup settings and locations. It seems you can choose a DVDRW for a standard backup of your choosing, but you’re not allowed to save a “system” image there (wtf?) because it must be NTFS… well time to plugin an external drive, or add a network location (like to WHS) and save credentials, then watch it complain that this is not secure because it’s on a network … of course if you have WHS why bother with this at all?
There’s also a link to recovery at the bottom of the page where system restore options, including restoring individual files, option to restore from an image backup, and also an option that resets windows back to factory defaults and it appears you betta backup your docs and pics and mp3’s first!
Not perfect by any means, but a good mixed bag of backup/recovery tools do exist in Win7.
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