So how do you back up the drivers in your Windows installation and how can you use these?  In all versions of Windows the drivers are stored in the C:\Windows\System32 folder in the sub-folders Drivers, DriverStore and if your installation has one, DRVSTORE.  These folders contain all the hardware drivers for your operating system.  In the folder location, C represents the drive on which you have Windows installed, this may be a different letter on your system.

You can simply copy these folders out to seperate storage (DO NOT MOVE THEM) such as an external USB drive or Pen Drive.  When time comes to reinstall the drivers you can copy the folders back.

Now there are a couple of ways to reinstall the drivers.  The easiest way is to simply restart the PC when the driver folders have been copied back to see if Windows automatically detects drivers for uninstalled hardware.  This is possible, but won’t be the case for all your hardware.

To install drivers for the missing hardware you need to open the Device Manager.  You can do this by typing Device Manager into the search box in the Start Menu.  You will see all your uninstalled drivers highlighted with a small yellow warning triangle icon.  You need to Right-Click on each one and select Update Driver.  Because the correct drivers are already in the drivers folders on your computer, telling Windows to find the drivers automatically should always install the correct one.  You may however, in some cases, have to tell the Device Manager which folder to look for.  You can either point it directly to one of the two drivers folders, or just at the System32 folder; making sure you tick the box “include subfolders”.

There is an important caveat with this.  The drivers for 64 bit (x64) and 32 bit (x86) versions of Windows are usually different.  This means that if you copy x86 drivers into an x64 copy of Windows; or vice-versa, they will not install.  Windows will recognise them as being incorrect.  You cannot use this method therefore when migrating your system from the 32-bit version of Windows to the 64-bit version when, for example, adding more memory to your PC.

You CAN use this method to migrate drivers between Windows Vista and Windows 7 (and back again) as both operating system share the same driver model, but again not between x86 and x64 builds.  You CAN’T use this to migrate Windows XP drivers to Vista or Windows 7 however as Windows XP uses an older driver model and the hardware drivers for XP are not compatible with the newer versions of Windows.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The Evolution groupware suite has a built in backup/restore system that will amaze you how how well (and quickly) it works. We’re not talking about the time consuming back up and restore of Outlook PST files. It doesn’t matter how large your Evolution folders have grown, this backup/restore is fast and painless. And in this article, I am going to show you just how easy this task is.

Assumptions

It should be fairly safe to assume that you will backing up and restoring from and to the same release of Evolution. I have not tested this, but you might be safe to do so only if the releases are not far apart. To be safe, however, you should make sure both source and target are of the same release. You will also have to have the means with which to copy files back and forth. If you are restoring to a new machine it would be safe to say that you have either placed these files on a backup drive. This article will also assume you have not already set up Evolution. You can restore over a currently configured Evolution, but we don’t want to do that. With that said, let’s begin the backup/restore.

Backup

If you open up Evolution click on File > Backup Settings. When you do this a new window will open asking you where to save the file and what name to give the file. The default filename is evolution-backup.tar.gz. If you do change the name, make sure you do not change the extension .tar.gz as that is the extension the Evolution restore system will need to see.

Believe it or not, that is all you need to do for the restore. The size of your Evolution folders will determine how long the backup process will take. I’m fairly confident you will be surprised how quickly this backs up.

Restore

Figure 1

Now for the fun. The restore process is just as simple. When you fire up Evolution for the first time you will see the Welcome window.  After the first Welcome screen (just click Forward to get past that) you will see the only screen you need for the restore (see Figure 1).

The first step is to check the box for Restore Evolution from backup file. Once you have done that click the Folder button and then navigate to where you have your evolution-backup.tar.gz file saved. Once you have located that file click Apply and the restoration will commence.

When the restore is complete the only thing you will need to do is to enter your email password(s) in order to download the mail you’ve missed during the process.

If, like me, you use scripts for your signature, you will have to make sure those scripts are on the new machine (as well as in the same place).

Final thoughts

The backup/restore of the Evolution groupware suite is one of the most painless I have come across. It’s fast, reliable, and requires very little work.

Well, there’s a handy tool that will take care of all of that for you. The tool is called APTonCD. What this tool does is create a CD with all of the applications you have installed – basically a portable repository. And, with the same tool, you can restore all of the packages on the CD – all from one convenient GUI.

Features

Choose specific packages on your local machine (or choose all).

Download entire repositories.

Burn CD/DVD from within APTonCD.

Create and restore from same GUI.

Auto-selection of dependencies option.

Easy to use.

Installation

The installation is simple:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software Application.
2. Enter “aptoncd” in the search bar (no quotes).
3. Mark APTonCD for installation.
4. Click Apply.

Once the installation is complete you can close out the installation tool and get ready to use APTonCD.

Starting and using APTonCD

Figure 1

Once installed APTonCD is found in the Administration sub-menu of the System menu (GNOME desktop). Figure 1 shows the main window for the application. From this window you can either create a new CD or restore from an already existing CD.

To create a new CD click the Create button which will open up another window. In this new window (see Figure 2) the packages will be collected and, eventually, listed out for you. From this listing you can select the packages you want to include on your CD. By default all of the packages are selected.This window will also includ the total size of the completed installation. As you can see (in Figure 2) the total size of my restore CD will be 596 MB (some of the packages are not selected).

Figure 2

If you want to add packages not already on your system you can click the Add drop down and select either Packages or Folder and then navigate to those files/folders. You can also open up Nautilus and drag and drop packages into the APTonCD window.

Once you have selected all of your packages you might want to go to the Edit menu and select “Auto-select Dependencies” to ensure all dependencies are met on your CD. Now it’s time to burn. When you’re ready click the Burn button which will open up a Disc Properties window (see Figure 3). In this new window you select your medium, the destination for the image file, a file name, and whether or not you want to create a meta-package. The meta-package is one package that

Figure 3

includes all packages on the CD as dependencies. This makes restoration very simple in that all APTonCD has to do is select one package to install.

When you click Apply APTonCD will begin to create the .iso image that you will then burn onto disk using your favorite CD burning software.

When the iso has been created a new window will open asking if you want to burn the CD/DVD. This window will allow you to select that application you want to burn with. If you chose you can click No and burn the CD/DVD later. I have found the burn portion of the APTonCD to be a bit flaky, so I just always burn by open up K3B and burning the image.

Restoring

I would like to say that APTonCD can easily handle the installation of your packages with a simple click of a button. It can not. What APTon CD does is create portable repositories. So you can use the APTonCD restore option to basically add your CD repository for installation.  I have found, however, the best way to install the entirety of the packages is with the tried and true command line. This allows you to quickly get all of your packages installed with a couple of easy commands. What you will want to do is this:

1. Insert your CD/DVD created by APTonCD.
2. Open up a command line.
3. Change to the directory where you CD is located with the command cd /media/cdrom (Note: Your CD might be located in a different directory).
4. Change into the packages directory with the command cd packages.
5. Issue the command sudo dpkg -i *deb which will install all packages on the CD.
6. After the installation is complete you MIGHT have to use Syanptic in the event their are broken packages.

Close out the command prompt and check your Applications menu, you should be good to go.

Final thoughts

I hope that the developers of APTonCD will some day make it much easier to restore from the GUI. But even with the inconvenience of having to use the command line for quick restoration, APTonCD is a very handy tool.

FavBackup is a web browser backup and restore application for the Windows operating system that supports the five popular web browsers Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome. Users can use FavBackup to backup and restore web browser settings and files.

FavBackup displays a list of options and web browsers in its interface upon startup. It should be noted that the software program is fully portable and does not require an installation. The options include creating a backup of the selected default web browser installation, of all selected web browser installations and to restore these settings again. Only one web browser can be backed up or restored at a time. It is for example possible to backup all different versions of Firefox or Google Chrome using the safe backup option. Backing up Firefox and Internet Explorer on the other hand would require two backup runs.

The difference between the backup and safe backup option is that the former only backs up the default web browser installation while the second will backup all installations of the selected web browser. FavBackup will display a list of settings and files that can be backed up after making the selection. This includes backing up bookmarks, cookies, plugins, extensions, preferences and history among other things.

One interesting aspect of the program is that it is possible to restore less data. It is for example possible to only restore bookmarks or cookies although a full browser backup has been created during the backup phase.

There are a few things that should be improved by the developer though. The first would be to provide an option to backup multiple web browsers at once. This is more comfortable than having to start the backup software multiple times to backup all installed browsers. An option to backup portable versions of the web browsers would also come in handy. Finally support for Opera 10 has to be added so that it can be backed up as well.

FavBrowser is a free portable software program for the Windows operating system that can be used to backup and restore web browsers easily.