Choosing Software

Wikipedia has really changed the way I do things... And I'm not talking about articles, I'm talking about choosing software.

Let me explain with an example. I recently installed Windows 7 on my computer (see previous post) and I wanted to try a new Media player. I've always been running Winamp and wanted something different...

The Wikipedia article on Winamp points to both a List of Media players and a Comparison of Media players. Using these lists, I found out that the best choice for me was Songbird. I also took notes of aTunes (and of course Winamp). I decided to use Songbird but I might change that decision because Songbird some interesting bugs on Windows 7 x64 (unsupported platform).

The same exercise can be done with CD burning Software points to a List of optical disc authoring software, which, in turn points to both CDBurnerXP and ImgBurn, both applications I have used in the past. It also shows that there is a CD Burning Open Source application on Windows called InfraRecorder (which I had never heard about).

I find this little "technique" of using "list of" article in Wikipedia very convenient.

Re-installing Windows

I have a book behind me called "Backup & Recovery" from O'Reilly Publishing. I have learn a very basic yet very important lesson from that book... And If my memory is right it goes something like:
"Your backups are as good as your last restoration attempt."

The whole concept being that even though you have backups, unless your actually tried to restore those backups, they don't mean anything.

Since:

• Microsoft came out with an RC of Windows 7
• I ran Windows XP which could only see 3.5G out of 8G of physical RAM
• I'm been making backups of everything on my computer

I decided it was time to test that backup strategy with a fresh install of Windows. Of course, because Windows 7 RC will shutdown in 2010, I will have to re-do this process all over again.

Thus, I am writing here everything that I have to do in case I need to do it again. (This posting will be updated if anything changes during the year)

This Machine is use for: Gaming, Web, E-mail and the occasional programming in C++ / QT.

List of software I need to get online (in alphabetical order):

• 7zip
• Adobe Air
• Allsnap
• ClipX
• Boinc
• Dropbox
• Firefox
• Flash player
• Foxit Reader
• gnucash
• Launchy (no 64bit version, but 32bit seems to work)
• Nokia Qt SDK
• OpenOffice.org
• Pidgin
• Picasa
• Process Explorer
• Putty
• QDevelop
• SMplayer
• Steam
• Thunderbird
• VirtualBox
• Vlc
• WinDirStat
• WinSCP
• Xming

List of Backup procedures:

• Backed-up "Documents and Settings" Folder from Windows XP
• Backed-up "My Documents" Folder from Windows XP
• Backup list of mods in Oblivion Mod Manager and Fallout 3 mod Manager
  
• Imaged the C: Partition with CloneZilla (just in case)

List of Restore procedures:

• Moved the "My Documents", "My Pictures", etc as sub-folders of "D:\My Documents"
• Show File Extentions. Always. (Control Panel -> Folder options)
• Add "path=C:\Qt\2009.02\mingw\bin;C:\Qt\2009.02\qt\bin" variable in Control Panel -> System -> Advance -> Environment Variables
  
• Re-installed Firefox extentions (including: Xmarks, Noscript, Delicious bookmarks, IE tab ,etc)
• Restore Thunderbird directories:
  

1. Documents and Settings\Ve2dmn\Application Data\Thunderbird to C:\Users\Ve2dmn\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird
2. Documents and Settings\Ve2dmn\Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird to C:\Users\Ve2dmn\AppData\Local\Thunderbird

The rest is mostly tweaking.

I guess I have proven to myself I'm somewhat protected against data loss now... Eventually I will have something like Time Machine, TimeVault or Flyback for Windows, but for now, I guess this will have to do :)