Well, my children, it is time for a bedtime story. Let me tell you a tale of a man responsible for a computer network consisting of four machines, three printers and other small odds and ends. One of the machines is a server, two machines are desktops and the last machine is a laptop. The laptop is used primarily by my Most Significant Other. Now, let me be honest. The laptop started out as my machine, but somehow over the last 18 months I’ve lost control of it and despite my protest, she doesn’t consider it mine anymore.
All of the machines except for the server and the laptop run Windows Vista. The server runs specialized Windows Home Server software. The laptop runs Windows XP Home. I decided last week that I was going to install Windows Vista on the laptop. I assured my Most Significant Other that she wouldn’t notice a significant change. Well, as you might surmise, she did notice. For the last five days I’ve heard nothing, but complaints about her inability to find programs or documents on that machine. These complaints were worse than water board torture because I could find her stuff and it was often in plain sight, but she couldn’t see it.
This evening when I got home from work, I told her I would restore the machine to the way it was the hour before I installed Windows Vista on it. She gave me one of those looks that said, “I’ve heard that tale before. You’ll be up all night.” Well, between you and me, before I got Windows Home Server, I would’ve been up all night installing and reinstalling the operating system software and documents. But this time I had a secret weapon and I wasn’t afraid to use it.
I brought the laptop over to my desk at 5:10 PM. I inserted the Windows Home Server PC restore disk in the laptop and rebooted the machine. The machine spun up and asked me for the password to the server, which I gave. The machine then ask me for the name of the machine I wanted to restore and I gave it the name of the laptop. Then it asked me which backup I wanted to restore. I said I wanted the backup of May 7, 2009 which was the last Windows XP backup for that machine. The machine then launched a little timer which basically said, “Come back in 20 minutes.”
Well, the machine lied. At 5:45 PM, 35 minutes from my starting time, the machine announced that it was finished and told me to reboot. I pulled the restore CD out and rebooted the machine and the Windows XP splash screen appeared. Every program, every document file was reinstalled exactly where it was supposed to be. Every desktop looked like it was supposed to look, every icon was exactly where it was supposed to be (including my Most Significant Other’s most cluttered desktop in the history of mankind).
The moral of this story? Windows Home Server had earned its keep tonight. And on the other hand, I had learned my lesson. I have now officially conceded the laptop to being hers, but I secretly can’t wait for her to ask me how to do something in Windows XP so I can tell her I don’t remember. (Just joking, MSO, in case you’re reading this.)
In the meantime, I’m not sure what I’m going to do the rest of this evening since I will not be spending the night installing software.
Until the next time,
Bill
Y’know, all that was missing was your sword as you did battle. 🙂 The keyboard: the next pen, y/n?
What are your thoughts on Windows 7? We’re waiting to upgrade our desktop until it comes out, but you keep extolling the virtues of Vista (even if your MSO does not).
back-up software, you took the easy way out! hurumph! that takes all the fun out of it.
…ok, now where did i put my windows 98 boot disk????