Luckily you have program in XP that saves copies of your system files for you, called Restore Points, in a way you can easily go back and use them.   It's called System Restore and is by default running on your system.  Below is a display of System Restore from the Control Panel / System / System Restore tab:

Note this system is dedicating 10% of the disk to Restore
Also note that you can turn System Restore off via the check box near the top.  If you turn it off you will free up that disk space but you also will NOT have any Restore Points to return your system to if serious problems occur.  It is best to enable it and set it at a level of disk usage you can afford to dedicate for this program.

Once enabled System Restore will create Restore Points every time you do HW or SW installs and also a System Check Point every few days.  You can even create your own Check Points if you so desire.

To do so, or to Restore your system to a prior Restore Point go to: Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools and you will be given the options to Restore my computer to an earlier time or Create a restore point.

If you choose to Restore the system to an earlier time you will be displayed a calendar of all existing Restore Points.  You can go back to prior months if you so desire.  The dates in bold are ones that Restore Points exist for.

The indented date is the latest Restore Point for that month.

Understand that a System Restore is for system files only, and not your personal data files, however applications and hardware you installed or upgraded maybe affected by a Restore.

OTHER BACKUP/RESTORE OPTIONS:
> Using outside vendor backup HW and SW, like Zip, IOMega drives
 > If you have a RW CD drive you can occasionally copy whole directories to CD's and restore them later if they get corrupted or deleted (see the MS Support website for how to setup an automatic scheduled backup program)
> Copy to another computer via a network LAN or the internet
> Although no MS backup program is installed with Home XP, there is a very nice System Backup and Restore program on your XP installation disc.  To install it you simply click on the install program on the CD.  Instructions are currently at this location on the MS Support website:

Some of the good things about this program is that it is simple and user friendly and can span multiple floppies, you can automate Backups and
you can Save to CD's (with restrictions).  Here is the main Save screen:

TIP:  Since System Restore does NOT backup your personal data files, you will have to do that separately, via a backup device, occasionally save this information to CD's or DVD's, external drive, memory chip, floppies, other computer, or some other method.

HOW TO MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR REGISTRY FILE

The system Registry file is kind of like the Support Branch of your Operating System.   This large file contains all the specific information about your system that the computer needs to do normal operations, from the programs you have and how you use them to how you connect to the internet and any custom settings you have selected.   Without it your system simply would not function, so it is important to back it up on occasion, especially if you ever go in and edit the file, which you can if you know what you're doing.   Most backup programs (e.g. System Restore) include a backup of the Registry when you do a backup operation, but if you want to do it manually here is how (Note: this will be a large file so don't create too many copies of the Registry file):

--  Click the Start button and select Run...
--  Type in "regedit" and click OK
--  Click on the File tab, then click Export...
--  Find a location on your disk to store this file (e.g. My Documents/Backups/ )
--  Type in a file name (e.g. "ManualBU(date)", and make sure the "Export Range" is set to "All".
--  Click Save (the file name should look like this but with actual date you did this:  ManualBU5-22-2006.reg)
--  Close the registry editor (File tab and Exit)

You have now backed up your windows registry.    The suffix of ".reg" tells the system it is a Registry backup file.  For more information on the Registry File (e.g. How to restore it) see the Microsoft® website.

keoni@isp.com