The Automated System Recovery Wizard

Letís look at the Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard (ASR Wizard).
This wizard is a special variant of the Backup Wizard.This wizard makes a Normal
backup of the complete system,thus all volumes,no questions asked.Additionally,it
will copy a few con?guration ?les to a ?oppy,again no questions asked.The ?les
put on the ?oppy are equal to the Emergency Repair Disk (ERD) you have in
other Windows versions.Only the ERD could help you with boot,Registry,and
system ?le problems.If your disk crashed,the only way out was to reinstall the
complete system and then restore the backups you had.This ASR Wizard goes a
step further,by also making a complete backup of your system.The Recovery
Console (see Chapter 15) can restore this backup without ?rst reinstalling the
system.Because the ERD and the backup are made at the same time,they form a
perfect pair and will not contain inconsistencies and discrepancies.
Remember that you will need a backup medium that is accessible by the
Recovery Console;this will most likely require several gigabytes of data.Note
that in case of a recovery,your restore is as up-to-date as the backup made.You
are advised to run the ASR Wizard every time a signi?cant hardware and/or soft-
ware change is made to a system.Note that you need to run on every system to
be able to make a clean recovery,and never be convinced that two PCs are the
same because you bought them at the same time.Now let us look what it takes
to run the ASR Wizard and create a recovery point for your system.

1.Select Tools | ASR Wizard.
2.The ?rst thing you will notice is that the Backup tab will be selected.In
the situation you previously made ?les/folders selection,a dialog box
will appear asking you if you want to use this selection for the wizard.
Click No to clear the selection.Now the Automated System Recovery
Preparation Wizard open with its Welcome page.Click Next.
3.The next page is called Backup Destination.Note that the ASR Wizard
will make a backup of everything on your Windows XP system,so you do
not get an option to make a selection.On this page,you need to choose:
Backup media type
Backup media or ?le name Notice that you cannot choose the
Floppy as a backup media.Use Browse to determine the destination.
4.Click Next.
5.In case you have selected a media type that is not local to the system,for
example a backup unit or folder of a Windows Server in the network,a
Warning dialog box is displayed,informing you that this media may not
be accessible during a recovery.Click OK to continue,or Cancel if you
want to rethink the situation.
6.You have reached the last page of the wizard,but you are not off the
hook yet.Click Finish.
7.The Full backup will promptly start and continue for a while,depending
on the amount of data that needs to be backed up and the speed of
the backup media.Instead of staring to the monitor,make use of the
time available and get a blank diskette or one with at least 300 kilobytes
available.
8.Once the backup ?nishes,you will be asked to insert a blank ?oppy in
the A drive.Three ?les will be written to the ?oppy:asr.sif,asrpnp.sif,
and setup.log.All three are plain-text ?les that describe the current
system state.If you lose one of these ?les,you are not able to perform an
automated System Recovery.Note:ìasrîstands for Automated System
Recovery;ìasrpnpîstands for Automated System Recovery Plug ën Play
(describing the current PnP settings);and ìsifîstands for State
Information File,or System Information File.
How the recovery takes place is addressed in the ìRestoring Your Systemî
tion.Chapter 15 also addresses the topic of recovery in a broader setting.
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