A week or so back I got to test the Back-up built into Vista Ultimate. Not due to any problems caused by Vista but, because of some Hard drive issues. I was using the on board Intel RAID controller on my ASUS P5W64-WS Pro Motherboard. This thing has been causing a little trouble for a while. So, hoping it would solve all my woes, I decided to get an above board RAID controller.

Anticipating trouble with the transfer, I decided I needed a full back up of my PC. This was too much to send up to Mozy so I started looking at the back-up built into Vista.

In Vista Ultimate There is a back-up option called "Complete PC Backup".This lets you back-up an image of your entire computer to multiple CD/DVDs or an external hard drive. It's surprisingly quick... It took 10 minutes or so for it to make the image.

My initial switch over to the new RAID controller went perfectly. No need for the back-up... That was until one of my drives failed. *sigh* The I had trouble. I did a couple of dumb things I won't get into here but, needless to say, I finally needed that backup I made.

Here's the cool part... Once I got my drive situation sorted out I was in business. To restore a "Complete PC Backup" in Vista to new disks boot to the Vista DVD. After it loads, you will see and option to "Repair Vista". Click that link and you will be taken to another page with the option to "Restore from a Complete PC Backup". Vista will then look for the back-up. So, make sure your external Hard drive is connected or the First disk of your Back-up set is in the drive.

Vista will then format/partition your disk to match the information contained in the back-up. When the restore is done the PC will reboot and Windows will be back to the state it was in at the time of the backup. This worked perfectly for me and I was extremely relieved when all was done. Here's the bad: I believe the "Complete PC Backup" is only available in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. So, you Home Premium users will need to upgrade to Ultimate to get this feature. Sorry.

So, If you've picked and poked at your Vista installation until something breaks, you got this nifty feature to save you. Well, only if you have Business or Ultimate AND actually make a back-up first. Otherwise... Well.. umm... oops.

The Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) service is a pretty good feature of Windows Vista. Windows XP offered a similar feature in a "Previous Versions" client that needed to be installed by the user. This allowed users to take advantage of the backups that had been deployed. Vista's Shadow copy is on by default for the "system" drive and is "built-in".

What VSS does is to write a new copy of the file. So, instead of replacing an existing file, VSS creates a new file in available space and points to the original location for previous versions. Shadow copies are created when restore points are created, about once per day.

Here are some instructions if you need to restore a "previous version" of a file:

1. Locate the folder that contains the file or folder that was deleted or renamed in the Windows File Explorer.
2. Right-click file or folder, then click Restore previous versions.
3. Double-click a previous version of the folder that contains the file or folder you want to restore. (For example, if a file was deleted today, choose a version of the folder from yesterday, which should contain the file.)
4. In the folder, simply click and drag the file or folder that you want to restore to another location in order to restore it to that location.

Like I said above, the VSS service is turned on by default for the System drive. If, like me, you have other disks in your box you can enable this feature for those disks as well. Follow these steps to enable or disable the VSS service for a drive:

1. Open the Control Panel. Click: start button ---> Control Panel
2. Click System in the control Panel
3. In the left hand menu of the System window Click: "System Protection"
4. In the new window you will see the options for enabling/disabling Shadow copies.

Well, several months back I decided I wanted a Zune 80gig. So, I got online, found out who carried them locally and went and got one. I will have to say it has been a great investment. It is much better than my wife's 80gig video IPOD. Bigger screen, more vibrant colors, etc..

But, today I started the Zune software to update my Podcasts and found that they would not download. Each podcast showing this error:

Various Google searches did not return any helpful suggestions. One said: clear the Zune and Re-Sync. That didn't work. One said: uninstall the Zune software and reinstall. That didn't work either.

Then I made a startling discovery. One I'm almost ashamed to admit. Um, see I store all my Zune content on an external hard drive. And, um, I noticed that that drive was not showing up in "My Computer". So, I turned it off and back on, it came back. And, then my Zune software started downloading podcasts again. It seems like it wants to actually be able to access the drive where it is supposed to store it's content. How insane is that?? Why couldn't it just say: Destination drive not found. That would have been better than: error C00D1316.

So, if you are getting error C00D1316. Try checking your storage location and make sure it is accessible to the Zune software. That may be all you need to do to fix the problem. Let my stupidity guide you.

This will be somewhat of an anti-climatic follow-up for most of you guys... After installing Service Pack 3 for Windows XP, I have experienced absolutely no ill side-effects. This is a completely different experience from the release of Service Pack 2.. Whew!!

I can say that beyond the download (approx 70meg for me) being a little slow, that was the fault of my internet connection, this has gone without a hitch. In fact, I don't know if this was the intension or not but, my XP machine seems to be responding a bit faster than before the update. Might be my imagination but, I don't think so.

So, if you haven't already, go download and install the update. Don't be shy, it shouldn't bite... too hard anyway.

I heard from geekhat over on twitter that Service pack three for Windows XP was in his Updates this morning...

So I checked my Windows XP machine and ....

BEHOLD Service pack three is here! I'm downloading it now. I'll update again after the installation is complete.

A while back I blogged about Remote Desktop in Windows XP. Since the start of my Vista Quest I have continued to use the Vista remote desktop with great success. That is until I installed Services pack 1.

Here lately I've been noticing some differences when I log into some servers I manage. Nothing drastic mind you but there were some things that were no longer the same. So I got to Googeling...

I use the /console when logging in to these servers. For those who don't know the /console switch gives you the ability to log into a remote server with out using a Terminal Service client and it also logs you into the desktop that you would see if you were standing at the machine. So, If you started a process that was going to take a long time, you could log into that session remotely and check on or finish the process. And if you needed to install some software that could not be installed "remotely" the /console switch would allow you to continue.

With the introduction of Vista SP1 the /console switch no longer holds the same function. They have changed the /console to /admin The main reason for this is for compatibility with the new Server 2008 platform.

Server 2008 doesn't have a concept of a console that you can login to as that session (session 0) is for services and doesn't have an interactive session associated with it. The /admin switch is to login to the session that would have the physical keyboard/screen attached to it.

So... For those of you using Vista with Service Pack 1 you need to start using /admin instead of /console. It appears this is true even connecting to Server 2003.

Here's a "duh" for you...

If, when trying to log onto a Win XP machine via Remote Desktop, you get:

Apparently you cannot establish Remote Desktop connections when you are using an account with a null (blank) password.