When Windows goes wrong, it can go really wrong. Worse: Often it’s extremely difficult to save your system from Windows itself. Here’s how to use a simple USB drive to free space, remove viruses, rescue passwords and more from crunked Windows setups.
Windows 7: Windows System Restore has long been a great way to recover your system after a bad software install or a critical driver goes missing, but you may not know you can also use it to recover individual files.
Most of us remember Windows System Restore as a lame-duck feature from Windows XP; when it seemed we might benefit from using it, it never quite worked how we expected. That’s no longer the case.
Windows only: You’re about to do something to your computer and you know you should probably make a restore point, but who wants to dig around in some menus? Make one with a single click.
BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else.
It may have been a while since you considered using Windows’ built-in tools for backing up your data, but for the average user with media and crucial file needs, Windows 7′s default backup features look promising. Windows Vista was the first version of Windows to introduce a consolidated Backup and Restore Center, and Windows 7′s own backup centre builds on it. The strengths of Windows’ own system are its ability to leverage the built-in “Shadow Copy” features to restore previous versions of individual files or folders, and make only iterative backups when necessary—if only part of a massive file has changed, only that part has to be transferred and copied over. It also supports backup to shared network space and external drives, but you’d hope any backup utility worth its salt would do so. In a pretty real way, this backup system is kind of like Leopard’s Time Machine—but without all the eye candy. Let’s take a walk through the basics of Windows 7′s backup system, and highlight the changes since Vista:
Windows only: DriverBackup2 is a lightweight driver-backup tool. The application is portable with a caveat: you’ll need administrative privileges for full use. You can opt to backup one or all of your drivers, the backed up files are dumped into a tree structure based on driver name. DriverBackup2 also allows you to restore and delete unnecessary drivers. If you ever hunted for obscure drivers online, when installing legacy or obscure hardware for instance, DriverBackup2 will save you the hassle of searching them out again. For other driver viewing and backup solutions check out DoubleDriver and DriverView. DriverBackup2 is freeware, Windows only. DriverBackup2 [via gHacks]
Windows only: Closing applications that have become unresponsive usually involves opening the Task Manager and hoping you “End Process” before it ends your desktop. Windows xKill, a free stand-alone utility, aims to give you more firepower in shooting down buggy apps. Once it’s running, you hit Control-Alt-Backspace to activate the skull-and-bones cursor, and simply click on the flailing app’s window to kill it, similar to the Linux xkill command. Windows xKill does add an annoyingly blinking icon to your system tray, but you can set your system tray to always hide it if you’d like. Windows xKill is a free download for Windows systems only. Windows xKill [deviantART via Daily Gyan]
Windows only: Backup utility Double Driver lists all the hardware drivers installed on your system and creates backups of both the actual drivers and lists of the driver names. While handy with any computer, Double Driver really shines if you have a computer that came with pre-installed drivers that are hard if not impossible to come by. With a few clicks you’ll have those archaic laptop drivers backed up and ready to put back to work after a fresh install. Double Driver is a free download for Windows only. Double Driver [via gHacks]
