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In Control Panel by Category. Backup and Restore. If I right click I get a widow: Open/Open new window/create shortcut
There is nothing to indicate “administrator”. (Left Click has NO effect) I didn’t know what the shiield symbol meant, so I have learnt something. LOL.

With the results you report, I think we may really be on the track of it, at least to the extent that you definitely have trouble, and others may be able to suggest a cure better than I can. One question I can think to ask is if the icon for System and Security appears as a shortcut (with a curled arrow) or as it looks like the screen shot shown below, and another question is to ask if you have tried any of the other functions under System and Security to see if they work properly.

I decided to try the Windows 7 Backup, but I can’t open the Backup and Restore Center

How are you viewing the Control Panel? By Category or by Icons? If by category, then just left-clicking on Back up your computer should open it (and you did say that you can’t open it), but if you are using either of the icon views you must right-click the selection and Run as administrator. Any of the operations in Backup and Restore Center also require you to Run as administrator, which is what the shield symbol to the left an application means.

That is all a bit beyond my computing capabilities. What about the idea of me reinstalling Acronis. It was working to a certain degree.? I did make a restore disk in Acronis but I guess that wouldn’t work now that I have uninstalled Acronis eh.?

Sure it will work, but it would be safer to boot from the Acronis boot disk if you made one. Once Acronis is up and running, then you will have to navigate to the location of the backup, since Revo will probably have deleted any data about the backups you made. This also takes us back to the question of how long ago you made the backup, and whether you have any restore points since then. (Type restore point in the search box, and you’ll get plenty about that since it’s a part of Windows.)

Hypersearch engines are something you might look into.

I have had Copernic Agent Professional, which I gather is now available in a free version, for years, and long before their free Desktop and subsequently Desktop Pro stole the show. I recently realized that Agent Professional is a part of Desktop Pro in the form of the Web Search. That’s a little off the track, but if you happen to have Copernic Desktop Pro, try the Web search for things.

I don’t have the names nor details of the top-rated hypersearch engines, but a library site that I was familiar with named and ranked them at one time (I just checked it, and they are no longer there). It’s just a matter of getting a bunch of different search engines to run the same search simultaneously and eliminating the duplicate hits, preferably with filters on the results, but it is arguably more powerful than using a single engine, no matter how elegant its algorithm is claimed to be.

Two questions come to mind:

How are you fixed for restore points? These can be undone if you restore to an earlier configuration, and if you can think of anything that might have messed up the native Windows Backup you might restore to a point prior to that to get it right.

If the native Backup is messed up without your ever having used it, then your entire installation is of questionable value, which is to say that you might need to get serious about the state of your entire operating system. Did you make a repair disk? There is also the matter of your having had Acronis installed and then uninstalling it. The version may matter, but if you made even a single backup that you still have it’s a simple enough matter to boot Acronis from CD and see if you can’t do something about restoring Windows own Backup.

Having one Windows application that you have never used fail to work makes it look like Windows itself may be corrupt. I advise against looking for an alternative when the default is out of order for reasons unknown. You say the system is only a few months old, and it’s a pain in the neck to do it but you can surely copy all of your data and re-install everything, updates included, to get it right. If it’s part of your system and it isn’t working now is the time to do it, before you have even more applications and data.

I should also mention that you can use your installation disk for Repair mode: specify the Language option, then when prompted to Install select Repair Mode instead. You may be stuck with re-installing upgrades, but at least you will should have your system back.

That is exactly what I did. I cannot open it by either method.

My apology, I somehow misread your post to mean the exact opposite of what it says. (It’s been a bad day.)

I recently performed a backup and image of one computer with no trouble at all, so it looks like you do have a problem, and I’m not sure I can help with it.

I can say that I have System Mechanic Pro (10.1.1) on the computer, but that is an entire suite and you can use it for a lot or a little, and I do not use it to repair my registry, amongst other things.

The obvious question is this: Do you already have a backup that might allow you to try to compare or restore the backup program itself (complete with registry settings)?

You might also find Grant Gibson’s site to be of interest, especially regarding tests.

I use it on two 2 GB machines (8 GB flash drives), and it does work, but more with some things than with others (which makes sense when you remember that it provides a boost to your most-used programs). If you are going to try it (and I agree that you won’t notice a thing on an 8 GB RAM machine), you will find that it has a learning curve of its own, as it learns what you use, and it’s best to have a dedicated machine-readyboost device pair.

I decided to try the Windows 7 Backup, but I can’t open the Backup and Restore Center, whether I go via Start, and type in Backup, or via the Control Panel
“Backup and Restore”.
Can anyone suggest how I can rectify this problem. There may be a simple answer but it’s got me bluffed.

Yes, it is in Control Panel, but when looking for such things the quick way is to type what you want into the Search Box that opens directly above the Start Button every time you click on it. Here, for good luck, is a little Backup Tutorial from Microsoft.

Hi Peter,

Perhaps you’re thinking of the ‘default’ you can set via Insert|Date & Time?

That is exactly what I want, but the format I want does not appear in the list from which I can select a format to be the default. I did, however, successfully set it as the default long date for Windows. (What I want is DDDD MMMM d, yyyy,)

That about sums it up. Pulling the plug on a spinning drive is a sure way to cause all kinds of problems. IMHO.

You mean after all of this talk about the drive being locked and the protection being equivalent to an OFF switch that the drive actually spins?

There is always a back door, and a good back door is hard to find.

As it stands, it is 0 for bbrearren and 1 for Jean.

Au contraire. Didn’t try it, did you?

And here I thought it was a stand-up comedy routine. An entertaining thread, a least.

PS – I was given the link to these threads from the computer forum. They recommended I come here. not sure if you’d want me to link that thread – but here it is in case:
http://ths.gardenweb…4472170.html?14

4 –

Hi Lynn

You are in the right place, but for some of your questions please don’t overlook the Hardware forum here in The Lounge, where you can find or start threads involving hard drive problems (including the mechanical side of it). You might take a look at 10 ways to keep hard drives from failing which might end up as part of a thread there if it isn’t already.

Why not leave the 60 GB partition with the OS and apps, then createa separate partition dor data with the remaining space. This seems to be one of the schemes that is most popular in these forums.

I am happy to report that I received a replacement drive Christmas eve, and the outcome is an unqualified success.

I eventually hit myself on the head with the realization that my O/S is Win 7 Ultimate, and the Win 7 backup gives me a bare metal restore where Acronis 2010 (on the machine in question) does not. That may or may not have helped, but I’m not likely to forget it next time, and in the blink of an eye (at the tap of a button) Microsoft’s own utility extended the 60 GB restored drive to the full 320 available.

Seasons Greetings to all.

This is a slightly old thread

Come now, as my threads go, it is brand spanking new, but I confess I did forget I had started it. I have several from eons ago that I have yet to close with a proper reply (e.g. batch conversion of *.doc to *.docx).

The problem has been resolved, and I confirmed it thanks to your reminder. Quite a few things were going on, so I performed a straight restore (with Acronis 2011). This restored the drive to its state of about a week (or two, on reflection), I performed the updates to bring it up to date, and all appeared to work. I can’t recall what I did or didn’t check, but your post led me to back it up again in full (for the partition), and I just tried both Visio and Project and both are in fine shape. Office has been working all along since the restore, but I’m not sure myself whether of not I checked Visio and Project, which are considered part of Office if you have them, as I do. My speculation that I had mixed 64-bit and 32-bit was obviously wrong.

The machine is running very well, thank you. My one complaint is that my usual source of tutorials for software (Lynda.com) only covers Visio up to 2007, although I expect I can get the significant portions of the 2010 version from MS sources. In sum, yes it is fixed, but I have no idea as to what was wrong in the first place. That, I think, is a fine argument in favour of backups and imaging. It took me back to a ‘known good’ configuration.

I have yet to not be able to sum up the difference in two words; greater capacity. 64-bit gets us beyond the 3.5 Gigs of RAM barrier and GUID PT gets us beyong the 2.19 TB boot drive barrier. I can’t imagine why I might want a 3TB boot drive but in case I ever do see a reason, I can.

USB3 will blend right in because its backward compatible so there will come a time ( espcially now that there’s a definition from Intel on its functional on-board parameters) when all USB ports are v.3.0 while most things plugged in may still be 2.0 devices. The cloud is fine but folks still want (or at least should want) a local backup as well, and its quite nice to transfer data at the max speed of my older hard drives–I imagine its fantastic with a SSD.

I refuse to quote Bill Gates, but Man, are you begging for it.