Robert,
Yes, I had tried Acronis to make a bootable clone of my machine a few days
before I messed up the registry. But it didn't produce a bootable clone,
because the ThinkPad X61 (and maybe other ThinkPad models), to be bootable,
have to be cloned in a different way (like removing the laptop's hard
drive, and using it as an external source to write to an internal drive,
then switching back--something like that, I forget).
As to restoring the partition with the problem, I'd have to have several
clones from different times. And that's getting to be cumbersome (although
not out of the question).
I went to the Apple precisely to avoid this problem. Backing up the Apple
side and the Windows-Parallels side is supposed to be much easier. But so
far, I'm not thrilled with the Mac, because a) using the Apple side
involves too much mousing around; this may be an issue of my unfamiliarity,
and b) Parallels, for the Windows side is pretty damn good, but not
perfect. In particular, I get "program not responding" a lot, and so does
my wife (who has the identical MacBook Pro). Web seems slower, but that may
be due to something other than the Mac.
I'm thinking of retaining the MacBook for music and photos, which it is
quite good at, and getting another Windows machine for my serious work.
And that raises my unanswered question: is there any reason to prefer XP
over Win7 for either XyWrite or things like Word and Excel?
--Harry
** Reply to message from Harry Binswanger on
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:17:27 -0400
Harry, before you proceed just make sure that the current
version of TrueImage actually works for you (if, indeed,
TrueImage is the program that will transport you -- I believe
that was Kari's initial suggestion). I had TrueImage 10, and
basically liked it although you could not extract individual
files to the specified directory -- it always put them at the
specified location in a "Drive(X)" directory, and then recreated
the directory tree there instead of where you directed the files
to go. Acronis told me to upgrade to overcome this bug. I
upgraded, and TI 11 (or whatever the latest version is called)
crashes my Vista box every time I try to use it. I wake up in
the morning with a frozen computer -- I have to pull the plug
and restart. It is incredibly buggy, IMO -- nearly unuseable.
I'm not the only person who feels this way. But maybe it's just
me ...
If you are restoring a whole partition, then TrueImage 10 worked
pretty well. I successfully used it to restore an entire
machine several times. You can, indeed, put in a brand new
drive as long as it has identical disk geometry to the old one
-- which basically means, same manufacturer and model. If you
use a different (e.g. larger) drive, it can still be done, but
it will not work out of the box. You need to understand how
boot sectors and disk geometry works. This is very very
technical stuff, and not for the faint of heart. I've done this
several times also, and a disk repair utility like DiskPatch can
be a huge help (DIY Data Recovery in the Netherlands -- Google
it).
Lastly, you are aware, I'm sure, that cloning your old drive may
simply reproduce the problems you had before on your new
installation -- aye what?
-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------
Harry Binswanger
hb@xxxxxxxx