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	Safety The following tips deal specifically with data safety and system issues.Many tips were learned from hard, personal experience, along with subscribers who sent in several tips from theirown experience. If you have any questions or recommendations as you go through these, please feel free to write.We always appreciate your interest and participation. Preserving Data Keep your Emergency Repair Disk updated. Update the disk or make anew one whenever you install an application, or make a manual change to the Registry, or add a new user or changelogins; basically, whenever you make a change to the Windows NT system. Make two copies: keep one at the site ina secure place where unauthorized people can't get to it and keep the other (or others) off-site with your off-sitebackups. You should also keep copies of your disk configuration. To save theconfiguration, put a formatted floppy in your A drive, start Disk Administrator, click Partition on the menu bar,then go to Configuration and click Save, OK. To recover the configuration, follow the same path, but click Recoverinstead of Save. Be sure to do the Save whenever you make any changes through Disk Administrator. When you delete a file using Windows NT Explorer (or some applications),the file is moved to the Recycle Bin, and can be recovered. However, the file does NOT go to the Recycle Bin whenyou delete over a network, or when you delete from many applications, such as Microsoft Outlook. For safety, it'sa good idea to delete only via Windows NT Explorer. Our new product Undelete will not have this limitation. If Windows NT Explorer crashes, you will lose any changes made tothe Desktop since you logged on. You can force the Desktop settings to be saved simply by clicking anywhere onthe Desktop and then pressing F5. If your Desktop doesn't appear at all after the crash, run REGEDT32 and go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \SOFTWARE \Microsoft \WindowsNT \CurrentVersion\Winlogon Then set the AutoRestartShell to "1". Protecting Data Renaming the default Windows NT accounts makes it harder to breakin; a criminal would have to figure out the account name as well as the password. For security, to prevent tampering with your data (accidental or otherwise),you should always lock your computer when you leave it. You can do this by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the WindowsNT Security window, then press W or click Lock Workstation. Or, you can lock automatically with a screen saverset up with a password. From Control Panel, click Display, or right click on the desktop and click Properties.In the Display Properties window, click the Screen Saver tab, select a screen saver, click Password Protected thenApply. When the screen saver activates, you will have about 8 or 10 seconds to move the mouse or hit a key to turnoff the screen saver. After that, you will have to enter your password. Protecting Your System Make a bootable Windows NT floppy. Then, if your boot sector becomescorrupted, you can boot from the floppy and copy a new version of the damaged file. It's much easier than reinstallingyour whole system! To create a bootable Windows NT floppy, bring up Windows NT Explorer.Next, open the View menu bar, click Options, then click the View tab. Make sure the first radio button Show AllFiles is checked. Close this window, then click the root folder of your boot partition, and copy these files toa formatted empty floppy: boot.ini ntdetect.com ntldr The following two files may not be present, but if they are, copythem to the floppy: bootsect.dos ntbootdd.sys Incidentally, when you format a disk (floppy or hard disk), the defaultis to do a full format. Quick Format is much faster, but it does not check all of the disk or erase everythingon it. If you want to make certain that all old data is erased, or if you are not certain that all of the diskis good, use the full format. Boot Configuration If, during boot-up, you use the Press Spacebar Now to invoke the LastKnown Good configuration, you will boot up using a saved good configuration. But, the NEXT time you use Last KnownGood, it will try to boot the faulty configuration you just avoided. Here is how you can avoid this problem: Right-click My Computer. Select Properties, then the Hardware Profiles tab. Select Copy and name the copy "original configuration2" (you can nameit anything-even the date it was created). Repeat until you have several choices (we have four). Select OK. Reboot and after the boot menu you will see a new menu which shows your choices,and looks like this: Hardware Profile/Configuration Recovery Menu This menu allows you to select a hardware profile to be used whenWindows NT is started. WindowsNT 4.0 Workstation (or Server, of course) WindowsNT 4.0 Workstation2 WindowsNT 4.0 Workstation3 WindowsNT 4.0 Workstation4 This procedure makes a change in the Registry. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \Control \IDConfigDB \HardwareProfiles, you will see additional folders for each configurationyou have created. After creating these configurations and the need arises to use "LastKnown Good", you will need to delete the original configuration because it's corrupt and will never boot properly.After you're logged in, use the process described above to delete the first configuration. You may replace it witha new configuration, if you like.   If you have any comments about this article orany requests for new technical articles e-mail
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