SYSTEMCED ERROR

George thanks for your information. We scare to lose the 'my doc' folder thus do not dare to try this repair option.

just to add my opinion here (relating to computer problems in general) this is how easy a computer can go wrong and all your precious documents can go easy as that, so my advice is to everyone is to partition your drive, regardless of the drive size it seems to be that 4gig for a windows partition is big enough for all programs, utils and use the left overs such as games and documents for the other partition (normally drive )

Heres my structure anyway
[code:1]C:
/Documents and Settings
/Program Files
/Windows

D:
/Documents and Settings
/Documents and Settings/Desktop
/Documents and Settings/Favorites
/Documents and Settings/My Documents
I used a program like TweakUI to change the location of my folders etc.
[/code:1]
This is my main file structure as you can see, but the most important point you will see here is that if my operating system goes off I can easily do a repair or even format without fear of loosing my precious documents in the process.

The only thing that you will tend to loose is all your system settings.

Well another possible alternative is iif you boot using a knoppix CD (Knoppix is a full linux distribution that runs straight off the CD), you can then work through Knoppix and recover all your files, and when you've backed up everything you need, just format the machine.

This is one good reason why servers should be used for service and not for storing stuff that could just as easily be stored somewhere less critical in case something happens to the machine. Ideally you should setup your server to perform its single task, install nothing else, then take an image of that disk (using norton ghost or whatever your tool of choice is), then if you reach this unlucky situation, you can just grab the image and rebuild the server in 30 minutes flat.

This is also a very good example of why you should regularly backup your files. If this server had had a properly set up backup schedule, you wouldn't have to bother about losing data.

So to end my preaching, here are some good practices to follow when you rebuild the machine :

1. Set it up with ONLY the one service it is supposed to be offering for example SQL server or webserver.

2. Don't store other documents / games / downloads etc on this machine, if you have documents to share, put them on a central file server which has a daily or twice daily backup schedule (depending on how often these files change). The best time to backup is lunchtime and at the end of the day.

3. Setup your server with a clean windows install, don't install anything you dont need, disable all the unnecessary services and get the server online. Use a disk imaging program such as Norton Ghost to take a full image of this 'proper' install. Save this ghost image somewhere safe.

4. Setup a backup system for the server so that you always have a copy of important files the server might generate (logfiles, databases etc etc).

5. In the event it goes belly-up on you, restore the previously saved image and any of the required backups (with the database etc) and you're not left wasting time trying to troubleshoot the problem.

6. Your IT manager is impressed by the low downtime of your systems and sanctions the company getting you a nice Acer laptop.



This is the route Chris took to getting his Acer Laptop.. really....