At 11:53 12/30/99 , Clarence W. Lee wrote:
>I read about the 'Emergency Recovery Utility" and the
>"MS Configuration Backup" Utility in the book "Inside Windows 98"
>by Jim Boyce. Can someone tell me where I can find these two
>Utilities.

Hi Clarence

See the bottom of this message for URLs to download these two
utilities.

I wouldn't bother with the Configuration Backup Utility because
it can fail and *wreck* your system. (I know this from experience.
See the URL below where Microsoft warns you not to use it.)
Besides, to restore using the Configuration Backup Utility, you
have to be in regular Windows. What is you can't boot to regular
Windows? Anyway, I think that the Emergency Recovery Utility (ERU)
is just as good. Here's why...

When you make a backup by running ERU.EXE, the files Config.sys,
Autoexec.bat, Win.ini, System.ini, Protocol.ini, User.dat,
System.dat, Io.sys, Command.com, Msdos.sys, and Explorer.exe are
backed up in a folder named (if you accept the default name)
C:\ERD. To restore any or all of these files, you boot to DOS
via floppy or to Command Prompt Mode from your hard disk and
run the DOS program C:\ERD\ERD.EXE. Your files (whichever ones
you pick from the ERD menu) are replaced with the ones that were
saved in that C:\ERD folder.

But you could create several copies of these files (maybe on
different dates) in separately named folders. Right now I have
about 20 backups in folders named \ERD1, \ERD2, \ERD3, \ERD4,...
After I run ERU.EXE, I rename the newly created ERD folder to
something like ERD17 (for example). If I need to restore my
files, I can just as easily run C:\ERD17\ERD.EXE as C:\ERD\ERD.EXE.
(I admit it might make more sense to rename the folders to better
indicate the date they were created.) By the way, my ERD folders
are actually subfolders of what I called C:\ERDS\ in order to keep
the root directory of C: as clean as possible.

There is just one caveat about the ERU utility. All the system
files that I mentioned must be present on your hard disk. If one
is missing, when you run ERD.EXE (ERU's recovery program), it
will hang as it searches for the missing file. (No big deal
though, just stop the program (with <Ctrl>C) and create dummy
versions of the missing files with the DOS text editor EDIT.COM.
Then ERD can replace the dummy with the saved version. Specifically,
you need to be sure that you have autoexec.bat and config.sys
files present on your system even if they have no real content.

You can get a copy of ERU from
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/bin/W95eruzip.exe>.
(It was included on the Win95 CD-ROM but Microsoft didn't include
it on the Win98 CD-ROM.) The Win95 version works fine with Win98.

See <http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q139/4/37.asp>
and <http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q141/0/14.asp>
for more information about ERU.

If you really want a copy of the Configuration Backup Utility, you
can get it from <http://ftp.pcworld.com/pub/system/backup/cfgbk.exe>.
But read Microsoft's warning to use ERU instead of CFGBK in the article
<http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q142/5/72.asp>.

Happy New Year!

Regards,
Bill

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