In the worst case, if your installation of Windows is too corrupt to be useful, you can still probably boot your computer off of a CD, using something like PEBuilder or KNOPPIX, to get access to your files. Don't worry if those terms mean nothing to you, they're stripped down versions of Windows or Linux that will let you read the files on your computer and copy them to another disk or over the network without relying on the operating system installed on your hard drive.

There was a point I was trying to make above, but I don't think I was sufficiently clear. When you do ask for help with Windows, whether you're asking our help desks or someone else, bear in mind that you don't need a working installation of Windows on the hard drive to recover your files. Using a bootable CD, or removing the hard drive and connecting it to another computer, will generally allow recovery of the files. Usually the files are worth more than the computer.

A staff member was asking me about this last Friday because some Dell Support person on the phone told her to reload her OS off the recovery CDs to fix her corrupted copy of Windows and she was rightly upset about the risk to all the photos she had stored on her home computer. (do the dell recovery CDs wipe out data? I'm not sure, never used them)

Someone should write a nice clear explanation of how to recover all your stuff with BartPE or KNOPPIX to your UNet home directory in case of an emergency. I guess I could add that to my todo list.

System Restore is a feature of Windows that undoes all recent changes to system settings to the most recent "stable" point. I am not aware of any way to inquire what that "stable point" was -- it could be the last reboot, or it could be something earlier or later. Do you feel lucky?

In theory, System Restore should not delete any files, though it will effectively disable access to recently installed application programs.

"System Recovery CD" came in the box from Dell, IBM, etc. There is no particular standard, but usually, it will erase *all* your data and restore your computer to the state it was in when shipped from the factory. All your files will be gone.

After doing *either* System Restore or using a System Recovery CD, your computer will likely be without any recent security patches. Visit Windows Update immediately. If you have MS Office, visit office.microsoft.com and run those updates, too (unlike all Linux vendors, Microsoft lacks a unified software update process).

unfortunately this luxury is not afforded once your operating system is corrupt.

I could certainly produce a different version of it geared towards the general student audience that would give you more opportunities to check out Linux as well.

Just to be safe, boot off a win2k cd and use the recovery console to rename "c:\documents and settings" to something else (like "c:\docset"), just in case the restore cd overwrites the user data in there. Booting off XP install cd's does not consistently allow you to move or rename this directory.

This isn't necessarily true across vendors and time, though, so be careful. IBM and Compaq certainly shipped CDs that would wipe all user data a couple years ago.

It's not a bug, It's a feature