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Back Ups and More

Importance of Backing up Data

If you're obsessive about keeping your PC tuned up, you can fall victim to a major crash or damaging virus. The good news is that even if you suffer a crash, there's a good chance that a data recovery specialist can locate most of your files. The bad news is, this process can be expensive.

If you back up your system regularly, you'll have little to worry about. But most of us don't. Many of Micro 2000’s clients admit that their customers have not or do not back up their files and their customers admit that data loss would be professionally disastrous. Many of our clients tell their customers to backup the data but more than half of their customers say they back up their data only "when they get around to it, if at all!

Backing up your documents on floppy disks is a good start, but if you can't afford to have your computer out of commission for a few days, you should back up your entire hard drive. (This will protect you from losing system configuration settings, hardware settings, customized software preferences, Internet bookmarks, and much more.) This is easy to do with a tape drive, a CDRW drive or Zip drive at a cost of less than two hundred dollars (slightly higher if you have a very large hard drive and need to buy a lot of Zip disks).

Do regular backups (once a week or, if you do a lot of work on your computer, once a day) just to have peace of mind. If you do lose your partition you would be able to rebuild it using the MicroScope software but it is very timely to do it this way.

Our newly released RemoteScope Version 2 includes an automated backup feature that allows you to schedule automatic backup of all essential files on each Client workstation including the My Documents folder. This means that once this has been set up, you can be safe in the knowledge that the critical files are protected against loss or even a virus attack by being backed up regularly.

2. Clearing your BIOS using MicroScope

Sometimes as a technician you will come across machines that have a password in the BIOS and you customer has forgotten the password or does not know the password at all. You or your customer does not want you to open the case to pull out the lithium battery or the lithium battery is soldered on the motherboard. Using the MicroScope software you can get rid of this password by draining the BIOS. What you do is the following: Load MicroScope and got to Diagnostics and then to the system board test. You have to be very quick to do this but what you do is right in the middle of the RTC test you kill all power to the system. If you do this at the right time it will drain the CMOS and allow the settings to either reset to the default settings or upon boot up give you a CMOS checksum error and let you go into the BIOS setup to reset the settings.

3. Performing a Write test without destroying data with MicroScope

As you know if you run a write test with our diagnostic software tool, MicroScope, it is a destructive test and you will lose your data. MicroScope has offered a Safe Write test since our version 8 MicroScope. This feature works exactly like the Write test, except it test both the read and write functions without destroying your data. The only thing you need to remember is that if you are in the midst of performing the Safe Write test DO NOT abort the test in the middle or you can and may end up losing your data.

Check out the new features on the newly released MicroScope Version 12!

4. Analyzing POST Codes with our POSTProbe

Sometimes codes appear on the POST-Probe that may not be in the POST-Probe manual. There are several things you can check if the code coming up on the POST-Probe is not listed:

1. First check to see if the system is booting. If the system is booting, the POST-Probe is not needed. What is happening is that the operating system is getting loaded and the I/O port used by the POST-Probe is receiving operation codes from the O/S. These codes are not used for diagnosis and are not meant to assist in troubleshooting. In this case you would want to load MicroScope.

2. Next, check to see if the POST-Probe is functioning properly. If the POST-Probe displays a code of 88 (or code AA on the PCI Post-Probe) in every system you try it in, check the DIP switches on the card itself. Make sure the switches are set to the correct port address according to the manual. If this still doesn’t solve the problem, it could be that the card is defective. If you only get an 88 or AA in a particular system but not others then you are looking at either a bad motherboard, CPU or BIOS chip.

3. Practically every BIOS counts codes in POST in number ascending order. There are very few exceptions to this rule. Award PNP BIOS displays C codes first (codes counting from C0 to CF) and then counts the rest of its codes in numeric order. If a BIOS is causing the POST to get confused, this may possibly be corrupted BIOS.

Disclaimer - The Micro 2000 Tech Tip is a free service providing information only. While we use reasonable care to see that this information is correct, we do not guarantee it for accuracy, completeness or fitness for a particular purpose. Micro 2000, Inc. shall not be liable for damages of any kind in connection with the use or misuse of this information.