Confused Novice , i Really Need Your Help People!!

Hello All,
last month, after using a defragmenter{Diskeeper}, i got a error:

WINDOWS COULD NOT START BECAUSE THE FOLLOWING FILE IS MISSING OR CORRUPT:
\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM

so basically, i had the XP CD, but since Diskeeper managed to corrupt the windows registry so badly, i had to reinstall XP Pro on my C Drive partition in my HDD.{i also have D,E , and F drives, and theyremained untouched by the reinstall}
so of course, all my programs, like antivirus, firewall, among others were obliterated, and it was a real hassle reinstalling them once again.

so, to avoid this again{because god knows i will need to defragment again, this time with Raxco PerfectDisk, and what if this failure should occur again? so , its better to be prepared}

1)ok, so i got TrueImage, version 8.0.0.826

2)in the installation process, it automatically directed me to make a 'rescue bootable CD' , which i did.

3)then i went into the 'create image' option, choose my C Drive, and choose removeable media options, ie CD's, put the compression as 'normal'.

4) it told me that i needed 9 CD's, but the 'image' was completed in only 7 CD's.

5)so far, so good.

6)now, my question is , what do i do with those 7 CD's? lol
consider that i know of only one situation where my drive was corrupted, as mentioned at the beginning of my post.

7) and in that failure, i couldnt boot into XP!
i would press F8, so to the boot options, but neither safe mode, nor "last
good config." would work.

8 ) i had a friend over to do the reinstall or XP, and frankly , i dont know HOW he booted the CD! i mean, did he just put in the XP CD, and press one of the F1 - F10 keys, to begin the recovery?

9) so anyway, is this bootable CD just like that, that i can insert this CD, it will boot up into its 'recovery manager' folder, even though XP itself is not booting?

10) and this is why i didnt store a image of my C drive, to say my D drive or E drive, because if XP itself dosent boot, how will i get acess to 'My Computer' restore the thing??

11) so ok, now, suppose XP dosent boot, i read in the user guide of TI that, you have to incert the last CD image first, and then continue the sequence from 1 to 7??

12) and so, where does the 'recovery bootable CD' come into the picture here?


please do help me figure all this stuff out!

 

I am sure someone will be along shortly to help with you’re questions. I just wanted to say I recently had a problem with Perfect Disk corrupting files. Maybe windows defrag utility is not that bad? I am also having a problem restoring using TI 8.0.

 

You insert the recovery disk in your cd drive and re-boot the computer. Then your computer should start from the cd. NOTE: You may have to change a setting in the bios before it will start from the cd.

You should veryify that the image you made is good. In order to do that all image files will have to be in the same directory or on the same disk. Make a folder on one of your partions and copy the files from the disks to it. (see chapter 10.1 of the help file)

Start up True Image and go to the tools menu and choose check image. Browse to the folder where you copied the image to and select it.

Hope that helps.

 

Can't answer all of your questions but:-

a) TI does not require Windows in order to boot from the rescue disk - at boot up it will go straight into the Acronis programme to enable a restore, (enter setup to ensure a boot from CD may be necessary).

b) As an alternative you might create a "Secure Zone" on one of your HDD's, Acronis will reserve a portion of your HDD that is invisible to Windows and write the images to there - then at boot up you will see "Press f11 to enter Acronis Recovery" and you can proceed from there - personally I have images in the "Secure Zone" and on an external USB HDD!

c) Do a search and you will find some posts/links explaining how to repair/reinstall Windows after a crash but note that it can be complicated doing it from a standard "Recovery" CD rather than from a Windows CD.

 

This is a common XP problem and not necessarily caused by Defragging or any other program.

Just to clarify what TI does. TI makes an Image or a Snapshot of your PC at a particular moment in time. You can use that image to restore your PC back to that point. The 7 CDs you made will restore your PC back to how it was at that point when you made them so if you used them in 6 months time you'll lose all work, programs and changes made in the last 6 months. Not very good.

I would create an Image on your D or E Drive on a daily basis and use that to recover when things go bad. That way you can always go back to a point in the last 24 hours.

The Rescue CD will hopefully allow you to find the image on your D or E drive and restore the image.

 

first off , thanks you guys for your replys, im a little closer to figuring this thing out now.

as you can see in the attachment, this is what is inside the folder named "recovery manager", size 9.8 MB, of the "TI bootable CD" which was created when i installed the program yesterday.

so lets consider a scenario here:

1) XP registry is corrupted OR my C drive is corrupted, Therefore my pc wont boot into XP.

2)so then what do i do? i then take the "recovery CD", and then i insert it into my Cd-drive, and then up comes this 'recovery manager'

3)then what do i double click on?

{continued in the next post}

 

{continued from above post}

4) now as you can see from the attachment, this is a snapshot taken from the pdf helpfile . so basically, in this situation then, i press f11 on startup, since i havent "activated" the startup-recovery manager yet, then how do i proceed??

5) consider that i dont have a 'secure Zone' , neither a image on my D or E drives, but i have 7 disks where the image is stored.

6) will i then be given prompts to proceed to put in the cd's one by one to begin the recovery?

thanks for being patient with me, i swear im making a lot of effort here, trying to understand all this!!

 

yes JoJoGunn, i must check to see if my image that i made is indeed good. { err, i'll do that once i understand how to exactly, ill get there, no worries}

sure rjbsec, ill be considering making a image on my d drive as well

PaulB, yep, its ok, because i backup my word documents on cd daily basis, so its ok, if the image is 2 months old!

 

When you boot from the Recovery CD you don't get the screen you have shown - the CD boots directly into the Acronis Recovery Software, which loads into RAM, (no f11 needed here).
You will then get a menu screen allowing you to select a restore from a previously saved image.

If you create a "Secure Zone" on a PC HDD for saving images, then whenever your PC boots up you will get the option to "Press f11 to ...." - this is without using the Recovery CD - its an auto-recovery option if you like.

In a nutshell:-
1) "Secure Zone" - option to restore at f11 on every boot up.
2) Image on external HDD etc - use Recovery CD to auto-boot into recovery screen when required.

 

ahh, ok thanks for clarifying that rjbsec.

ok so i have to enable booting from a CD-rom in the bios, thats what JoJogunn meant when he said you may have to change a setting in the BIOS.

ok, so when 'booting from cd-rom' is enabled in the Bios, then after inserting the recovery CD, i dont need to press F11, but it directly loads the Acronis recovery software, which then directs me as to how to go about restoring the partition image from a set of cd's. {right?}

 

ok, figured out how to make that change in the bios, here is a link i google came up with, its a little old, but the process is the same i guess.
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/bootcd.htm

when my pc is starting, i press F2, tab to the 'boot' option there, and then select 'cd rom ' from the options.

 

Sometimes we look beyond the basics when considering a question

 

Hello Lebowsky,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis Tru Image will boot the computer automatically from the Acronis Bootable Media (bootable CD) and will restore the hard drive contents from the image without requiring reinstallation of the operating system on the computer (if your OS doesn't boot). Acronis True Image is loaded entirely into the server RAM, so you can remove the bootable CD to insert an image disc. If you are to restore an image from removable media, e.g. CD, first insert the latest burnt CD and then follow instructions of the Restore Image Wizard.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Hi rjbsec,

Not strictly correct. For the F11 boot option to be available you will need to have chosen to activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (SRM) in addition to creating a Secure Zone (SZ).

For completeness I will add that a SZ can be created and used to store images without necessarily activating the SRM but you can't activate the SRM without creating a SZ.

Regards

 

Hello Irina, thanks for clarifying that you indeed do have to insert the last CD first, which is when instructions from the Acronis wizard come up as to how to proceed.

Menoracaman, thanks for your explaination, it totally made sense.

right now, im going thru the pdf helpfile, if anything comes up, i'll bring that up!

 

When all else fails ...... read the instructions!