Replies

There is PickMeApp, which is supposed to be able to do this. I’ve found that it doesn’t work with all applications and it’s not free, but YMMV.

Frank D

PickMeApp
http://www.pickmeapp.com/

· Transfer all your programs from one PC to another
· Use PickMeApp to Backup and Restore your PC
· Use PickMeApp as a software management tool
· Run PickMeApp from any storage

@quaker:
Thanks for the lead to emclient. As you say, it does look a lot like both Outlook Express and, as I note, the older versions of Thunderbird. I won’t switch from Thunderbird, but with any friends who are unhappy with Windows Live Mail I’ll recommend emclient.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for over three years under Win 7 (OutlookExpress before that under Win XP), and have never found any reasons to look elsewhere.

I suggest you try this one:

FREE from PDF to Word Converter Download Online | UniPDF
http://unipdf.com/download/

As a 100% FREE all-in-one PDF converter software, UniPDF is designed to make it extremely easier for you to convert PDF files not only to word documents, but also to images, HTML, or plain text files. UniPDF supports produce high quality word documents out of PDF files in batch mode. Conversion only takes seconds to complete! Stop wasting time on online PDF to Word tools while you can do it easily and fast with a FREE desktop utility!

Frank D

I must be a Luddite, and if they only knew about me, Microsoft would hate me. I’m still using MS Office 2002 (XP) together with the free Libre Office and Open Office. There’s nothing I need to do in any of the Office applications that I can’t do in those. Why pay MS when it’s all free or paid for long ago? What am I missing? The “smell” of new software? The feel of the cutesy Ribbons? Menus always did, and still do, work fine. :rolleyes:

Frank D

Ruirib,

As you say,

I actually never restore. Image verification and mounting is what I use and I do rely on the fact that on the few occasions Acronis was needed, it worked flawlessly. It’s a pretty good assurance for me.

After I verified my new Acronis full system image backup I mounted it and verified that I can copy and paste files I selected from it. So I feel secure. 🙂

Frank

Medico,

No, I have no other drive I can use, because you can only boot from an internal drive, and there’s only room for one in an all-in-one PC. If I had a regular PC, with room for another drive, there would be no problem, since all I would have to do is switch the cables on the drives. As I said, I’m only interested in standard setups and least-difficult options. In my case, that would be to use a reliable backup program (like Acronis) and do a full system image backup with incrementals.

Frank

Thanks, Ruirib,

You’ve summed up my situation.

By the way, the Acronis validation of the full system image that I just did ended without a notice or an error message, so I must assume that everything checked out OK. The validation took just about as long as the original backup (about 2 hours) and occupied a lot of system resources, which intruded on other things I was doing, so I won’t be doing that too often. 😉 But it was worth doing once.

Why don’t system builders at least offer the option of additional internal drives on all-in-one machines? Or externally-mounted bootable drives? I guess that would be a niche audience and wouldn’t be cost-effective to manufacture. So, I unknowingly opted for a limited system when I bought this PC. Oh well, the price was right. If there’s another PC in my future it will still be a desktop, but it won’t be an all-in-one.

Frank

Frank,

One thing I do each time I create an Image, restore the Image right after creating it. This is conclusive proof that the Image will work when you really need it. It can be kind of scary the first couple times you do this because when you Restore an Image, it first formats the partition, then restores it.

Medico,

Since I have only one hard drive in my PC, that would be asking for trouble. What would I do if the Image didn’t work, after a defective Restore operation deleted my hard drive’s contents? It would be great if I had a second, internal, identical hard drive that I could test it on, but with only one, as in my case, I don’t see it as viable. These all-in-one PCs are great for saving space, but room for only one HD is a limitation in this regard.

Frank

P.S. There is a validate function in Acronis and I’m running it right now. It looks as if that’s as close as I can get to certainty that a backup image will work when and if it’s needed. Now if I had one of the pricier versions of Windows 7 I could actually test the backup without running it. Here’s the pertinent info, from the Acronis Help file:

“Booting from tib images containing Windows 7 – Users of the Windows 7 Enterprise and Windows 7 Ultimate can boot from a tib image containing a backup of their system partition. This will allow testing the bootability of the backed up system without actual recovery. If the operating system boots from the tib file, then it will definitely boot after recovery from that tib file.”

How’s that for “missing the boat” on my part, since I have only the lowly Windows 7 Home Premium and a single HD PC. 🙁

Ruirib,

Thanks for your comments!

At last I can breathe easily again, knowing I’ve got full system backup coverage in the event of a serious PC problem.

Frank

Everyone,

Acronis just successfully completed a full system image backup of drives C, D, and E! 😀 The backup is on the external USB (G) drive and is 108 GB in size.

I have no idea why it succeeded (and why the One-Click option wouldn’t start), when all previous recent attempts to do this failed.

Thanks to all for your time, your helpful advice, and for sticking with me.

Frank D

Frank, this is my method of working.
My 2 pc’s have rather small hdd’s (1 in each), My C: Drive’s are 45gb each with nothing I can’t replace put in them. I have 4 large external hdd’s where I store everything (drag & drop or copy & paste) I don’t want to lose. I also have some copies on D: Drive (Partition) for quick access to them.
P.S. Do you know what size your back-up will be?

Roderunner,

You are knowledgeable with PCs and have your ways of working with them. On the other hand, I am just a lackadaisical PC user that accepts the way the manufacturer has set up my machine, and I want the simplest, most “brain-dead” way of doing everything and keeping everything in shape. All I want to do at this time is to create an image backup of my entire PC with automatic incrementals, with the ability to restore the complete, working PC from the image and to restore individual files and folders from it as well. Acronis was doing that very well up to a short time ago, but for some unknown reason now balks at my E: (system boot) drive, which leaves me at wit’s end as to what to do to get back to that simple time and conditions.

I have completely deleted all the previous backups from my external USB drive and am giving Acronis another shot. Its One-Click option still won’t choose the USB drive although there’s over 400 GB now free. I can’t figure out what logic it’s using, but it seems stupid regardless of how you look at it. So I’m now running Acronis in the full system/disk image backup mode, with all three (C, D, and E) drives included — and drive G: is now accepted as the backup storage medium (go figure). It’s at 87% and still running, so maybe I have a good shot at it. I’ll report back.

Thanks for your advice.

Frank

CLiNT,

Sorry about the command box. Here it is again, showing all the data:

It looks like the boot manager is on the E: drive. 🙁

The E: drive contains the following:

The H: drive is a RAM drive that I use to hold the contents of the Firefox cache. It doesn’t figure in any backup.

At this point it looks like I have no choice but to delete my current C: drive backups from the external USB drive (G) to free up space and try the One-Click Acronis backup again.

Frank

Roderunner,

I did a repair install of Acronis (just to be sure it was in good working order) and tried to do a One-Click backup to my G: (external USB) drive. Acronis refused to recognize my USB drive and insisted that I use my DVD drive, which of course I would not do. The “used space” on my C:, D:, and E: drives (the total amount to be backed up) is 160 GB and the free space on my 500 GB USB drive is 175 GB. So technically there’s enough space, but Acronis doesn’t think so. The used space on my USB drive is 280 GB, which is the aggregate size of the current backups of my two PCs, and I’m not about to delete them just to run a test of Acronis One-Click backup. So, for me Acronis at the present time is a No-Go.

Frank

CLiNT,

Here is the data from the BCDedit command:

32658-Clipboard01

It appears that everything is on the C: drive.

Does that give us what we need to know? Thanks!

Frank