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Why I don’t use Win7 Backup …. verification of backup integrity. I have stuck with Acronis True Image Home mostly because it has the option to verify that the data it has written to my backup device is not corrupted – that in fact I can do a restore if necessary. As they say, experience can be a harsh teacher.

Nowhere have I found documentation that tells me Win7’s (or Vista’s, or XP’s) built-in backup tool does anything to check the integrity of the backup files it creates. Can you help with my concern Fred?

Thank for the responses folks.
The detail I should have included is that I have Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 .

Same problem here with OL07. The problem went away after I upgraded to Office (and therefore Outlook) 2010.

but the marketing gurus will still try to shove it down our throats.

USB 2.0 is more than sufficient for the vast majority of USB devices. For devices needing greater bandwidth, existing eSATA or FireWire connections can easily handle the load.

Since SATA is already built into nearly every computing device with a hard drive it is cheap to implement eSATA. There are no electronics involved, just a different connector. You can add eSATA to any desktop PC already running SATA for about US$10. And, eSATA runs at the same speed as SATA. Further, it has become common to build combination USB 2.0/eSATA ports into notebooks. I personally backup my notebook to an external eSATA drive.

The other high bandwidth use is video. eSATA shines here too, but professional and serious amatuer videographers have settled on Firewire. In addition to speed, Firewire includes networking capabilities to control multiple Firewire devices from a single point. You’ll find Firewire routinely built into video related devices currently on the market.

I’m not knocking USB 3.0’s capabilities. I am simply saying it is a technology that came to market too late to be relevant. But we will still see it hyped because the marketing folks are trying to recover all those otherwise lost R&D costs.

Hey there Allen Morse III–

Rereading my post I realize I skipped a step that lead to misunderstanding… I AM running TCP/IP. However, Windows has used NetBIOS for file/printer sharing starting with 16bit Windows For Workgroups. The current flavor built into Windows is NetBIOS over TCP/IP (ports 137-139) – and dude, this incarnation of NetBIOS IS routable; although most firewalls will by default, not let these packets escape the LAN.

I wouldn’t think a cheap unmanaged switch would care what ports travelled through it – but in some weird way, it sure seems like the one referrenced in this thread does. The fact that I can use RDP to reach the PC across the LAN, but can’t see an unprotected shared folder on this same PC across the same copper tells me this is so.

II don’t expect a fast appearance of USB 3.0 devices.

The devices best needing the speed boost are external storage devices – I’ll put my money (in fact I already have) on eSATA over USB. Realistically it is cheaper to produce because most hard drives are already using SATA technology, and is still WAY faster than USB 3.0. And my brand new notebook has figured out a way to combine an eSATA and USB 2.0 port into one connector no bigger than a USB 2.0 connector.

Next up is HD video – and Firewire 800 is plenty fast, offers superior control over multiple devices from a single point and most pro-sumer video devices already have this interface.

USB 3.0 connectors take up more space on already squeezed edges of ultra-thin notebooks.

My opinion is USB 3.0 is about 2-3 years too late to matter for broad adoption.

Jim Johnson

First my setup is using Win7 Pro with Office 2010 (Pro version) running on Win7 and my older Office 2003 running in XP Mode.

I do this because ‘compatible’ is not the same as ‘native’. Particularly in Excel, if you edit a file created in Office 2003 (.xls) with Office 2007 or 2010 then save the file in .xls format, you will often get a warning about potential loss of some features – – – what the warning doesn’t tell you is that Office 2007/2010 will substitute some VBA code to attempt to retain features. This can happen with actions as simple as formatting cells with a different color text. I have then run into a couple very sensitive email systems that will refuse to pass these files because of the embedded VBA code. I then have no choice but to use Excel 2003 to make my edits. I too run into issues mixing older and newer versions of apps on the same system. XP Mode sidesteps this issue.

As for the Outlook issue specifically… I love Outlook 2010 with a caveat and a work around. Other than the comfortable and highly customizable Toolbars and a couple little used add-ins that depend on Toolbars, I’ve lost nothing going from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2010 and gained much. .

What I did was use the Outlook 2010 Quick Access Toolbars to mostly duplicate my primary Outlook 2003 Toolbars, then minimized the Ribbon. The Ribbon is still readily available for those times I need it – which isn’t often.

And by the way, a technique is circulating for adding Word 2003 toolbars to the Word 2007/2010 Ribbon … no this is not a VBA add-on. It requires using Word 2003 to build a custom toolbar, saving the blank document as a template, then moving the template into Word 2007/2010’s startup folder. Word 2007/2010 automatically creates a new Ribbon segment with your Word 2003 icons. It doesn’t work for every Word 2003 menu option, but it does work for most of them. I create a number of fill-in-the-blank forms in Word, and Word 2003’s tools are superior for this type of document. And I use Word 2003’s tools in Word 2010. It’s the best of both worlds. …and for something really odd-ball, well that’s why I am using XP Mode and Office 2003.

On a normally single user Vista or Win7 PC here is what I do to avoid showing other accounts setup on the PC (as in an (or THE) Adminstrator account…
From an administrator account, I use the Run function and enter: control userpasswords2
Then first, select the primary user account, second, uncheck the box “User must provide a user name and password…” Click the Apply button.

Here is where my instructions differ from the automatic login instructions you commonly see elsewhere-

On the dialog box that pops up, make sure the userID is correct, but do not enter the password for this account. Click the OK button.

When you boot, the system will skip the select account screen and come directly to the primary user’s account. The Administrator (or other) accounts aren’t genuinely hidden, you can still get to them via the ‘switch user’ function, but it takes extra effort to get there instead of the other way around.

Hit the Enter key or click the ‘Proceed’ arrow. What happens next is a screen that tells you the user password is invalid [DUH!, we deliberately didn’t give the automatic login function a password] Hit the Enter key again and you are taken to the screen where the user enters his/her password and logs in.

Yes, it takes one extra click over the ‘normal’ login via the switch user screen. But I use the Enter key which is faster anyhow, I am not bothered with making a choice and I still have the same level of password protection.

Fred, this is in regard to the BSOD in Win7 … for me the tip off was the 1TB Seagate Freeagent drive. You are likely right on that the issue is a USB port – but from experience, it is the mini-port on the drive, not the PC’s USB port. I had to replace an identical drive under warranty for this reason.