Making a Backup

Hi All
Can I make a backup of system files to burn to a CD that I could access each file individually and restore to my system in case of damage or loss,
and is there a way that it would reinstall where it is suppose to with out me having to install it there manually?
Please note my computer experience when posting back

Thanks
Geri

 

XP's backup program will do this. Just save the backup file to your hard drive and then use your cd burner software to burn the file to a cd. When you use the restore feature of the program you can select the files you want to restore and you'll be given the option to restore them to the original location or a different one. One thing to be aware of though is that when you restore the files from the cd they'll have the read only attribute so if you should want to edit them in some way you'll have to first remove it. To do this, once you've copied them back to the hard drive, right click on them, choose properties and uncheck read only.