Hola Ron,
I expected somehow a reply like yours. My question tends to know where to look at to eliminate / stop any function I do not want.
A guy that "knows a lot" did a trimming, messing with the registers but after few months I started to have more and more problems and my PC became close to useless. No more.
After repartition / reinstalling I want to do something valid without compromising my data and sanity of Anita (my secretary) and myself.
What is the actual use of a mirror? To be of any use, has it to be updated? Is it like restoring the system?
Thanks for your time.
Me too I was born on February 7th. Good people the Aquarians. I go along with them quite well, specially with girls.
Yes, February 7th and in my case 1950. Damn, that was quite a few years ago.
Anyway, a few little explanations. You will frequently hear the term "mirror" as it applies to mirroring a drive for example. Another way to say it is to "image" a drive. You may want to think of these terms as taking a picture of a drive or drive partition. Hey, image, picture see the connection? Cloning is another popular term.
Read the post by Grossel carefully. He mentions some pretty good and free software for creating a disk image of your HDD following a nice fresh clean install of the operating system. The software used to image, clone or mirror a disk is a tool and there are no shortage of both free and paid tools out there
like the Free Hard Disk and Partition Imaging and Backup Software found here. The link includes the software Grossel mentions.
Something to note is you will see statements like this with PING and other software tools:
This is a live ISO that you can burn onto a CD so that you can use it on any computer regardless of the operating system that is running.
What that is telling you is that when you download the file you get a large file called an ISO file. That file then needs to be burned to a CD or DVD to be of any use. Once burned to a disk then the disk is bootable media and you can boot the computer from the disk and use the utilities on it. Pretty good stuff but... You need to get familiar with it and understand it before really using it.
So what are we doing with this approach? First we do an install of Windows and once we install Windows and any needed drivers and other software we create an image of the HDD on a DVD. That image is your system how you created it less any junk and crapware you have uninstalled. Then you can tweak and peak and burn another CD or DVD. The only limitation is how much data you can burn to a DVD disk. Now you have a complete backup so if things go amuck you can easily restore your computer to exactly how you set it up on day one.
Another option is to place all of the content of a Windows install disk in a folder on a hard drive of another computer. Then using a tool like Nlite create a slipstream install disk for Windows. This method involves going into the folder and removing and adding components of your choosing. I won't really get into "slipstreaming" as unless someone is quite savy it can become a nightmare real quick. There are things (components) that can and can not be removed and it becomes easy to start creating install disk that won't run or function correctly even if they do install.
Last but not least, many will suggest using Linux as your operating system. Linux works and is a great operating system. However, much of this Linux really depends on what you use the computer for and if there are Linux applications out there that will do as you want them to do. Since you are working in a Windows environment I believe your secretary would really dislike you if you gave her a Linux box in the business world.
Be wary of those who will "help" you by removing Windows components to speed up or improve your computers performance. Bad things can happen.
Ron