Well, my 6 month old HP desktop computer has been having some problems lately, first with Windows XP media center disappearing, and then gradually not running programs *I* wanted it to, such as GetDataBack XP ( to recover a crashed 10 gig usb 2.0 pocket drive that got lunched a couple weeks ago in the student lab ), Norton Utilities WinDoctor ( to fix multitudes of problems ), and a few other things.

Having done this once already this past summer on this system, I knew I could recover apps and OS from the system recovery tool, without deleting my data or formatting the drive.

I did it the smart way, I thought….backed up the Registry by exporting it, before getting started. Also backed up about 15 gigs of files to the exteranl 80 gig drive. Ran recovery, and no major problem EXCEPT 6 hours of waiting for it to “Finish, click to return to windows”, where it must have been doing SOMETHING. I left and went to work without it finishing, but when I got off and came home, it had finished.

So, made sure the data was there and checked several shortcuts ( MS Office, Norton Internet Security, etc) and got the normal errors I’ve seen several times, stating pretty much that registry data does not exist (which is the reason I exported and saved the registry before starting.

I clicked over to My Docs, where I’d saved the exported registry, and reimported it. At this point, I haven’t reinstalled anything…yet.

Office is now there but ‘needs to install?’ Norton Antivirus is a no go. Spy sweeper is still dead….and GetDataBack STILL won’t install….but Windows Xp Pro Media Center Edition is working fine again….now I can hook up the newly available cable tv cable and watch tv and record to the drive or dvd burner.

I suppose I’ll have to go thru about 300 programs one by one and reinstall a large portion of them again…just to make sure they work.

It still pisses me off that Windoze, even at this late date in microsoft history, is STILL so buggy, NOT dependable to stay running, and so ridden with security problems that you HAVE to run more than a half dozen virus, spyware, and firewall programs JUST to stay safe while on the web….

Ric