Rescue The Drowning PC - Emergency Recovery Utility

Rescue The Drowning PC - Emergency Recovery Utility

Before you ask, ONLY Win 95 users should bother with the ERU. Win 98/ME users have more sophisticated (and easier-to-use) options.

Install the Windows Emergency Recovery Utility (ERU.EXE) from your Windows disk, located at \OTHER\MISC\ERU, into Windows. (If you have Windows on CD, this may be on the Companion CD.) Install ERU by copying the files from your Windows CD into a folder titled ERU (the program comes in such a folder) and creating a shortcut to ERU on your desktop.

Being a Microsoft product, ERU has an odd bug that may cause it to disappear from your screen in mid-save. This is caused by Windows's lack of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Correct this by going into Windows Explorer, go through View/Options, and select "Show All Files." Make sure that Hide MS-DOS File Extensions is deselected. Click OK. (This makes "hidden" files such as these two visible.) Now, in the left pane of Explorer, click on C: (your boot drive), and look in the right pane for these two files. If either of them are not there, you will need to create a "dummy" file for ERU to work properly. Do so by opening up Notepad to a blank page. Select File/Save, and save the blank page to your C: directory. Make sure you have All Files (*.*) selected in the box next to Save As Type. Type the full title of your file, either CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT. (Naturally, if you're missing both files, you'll need to create dummies for both.) Click Save. Close Notepad and start ERU. (Do NOT create dummy files for either of these files if they already exist!)

Run the program (double-click the shortcut) and choose Drive A: to back up your emergency files. You also may want to run the program again and make a backup to your hard drive as well. ERU will copy 12 files to your disk: ERE.EXE, ERD.INF, USER.DAT, SYSTEM.DAT, IO.SYS, COMMAND.COM, MSDOS.COM, PROTOCOL.INI, WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI, AUTOEXEC.BAT, and CONFIG.SYS. The three .INI files are not vital to successfully restoring your hard drive with ERU, so if all of these files won't fit onto a single floppy, deselect SYSTEM.INI from the list of "optional" files to be copied and copy that file onto a separate floppy or onto your hard drive. Create a shortcut to ERU on your startup disk (as above) by going into Notepad and typing the following:

C:
CD \ERD
ERD.EXE

Then select Save As, insert your startup disk into Drive A:, and select A: as the drive to which you want to save your file. On the bottom, select Save As Type, select All Files, then next to File Name, type RECOVER.BAT and click Save. If the time ever comes that you can't start your computer, turn the computer off, insert the startup disk in its drive, and turn it back on. The disk will start the computer. At the A: prompt, type RECOVER and press Enter. I would recommend test-driving your ERU disk after completing it, by turning the computer off, inserting the ERU disk, and turning it back on just as if you were having a real problem. If the recovery utility starts, you're in business. Just select Exit without restoring any files, write-protect the disk, and put it somewhere safe. It's a good idea to redo your startup and ERU periodically, particularly after periods of heavy use or after installing or uninstalling programs.

Win 95 has a backup utility called Cfg Backup that restores your hard disk, or claims to; however, the program does not sufficiently restore your Registry (see below), nor does it operate in Safe Mode or outside of Windows. I would recommend that you NOT use this utility. Use ERU instead. For specifics about the CFGBack utility, visit support.microsoft.com/ and hunt down the article about CFGBack. It's Article Q142572.

Rescue The Drowning Computer

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