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Good Freeware System Snapshot Tool For Windows?
Khyber writes "I'm doing a little personal research into a project that tracks what changes get made to your system every time you install a program. I know there are ways of checking through Windows Restore Points, but that's not what I'm trying to do. Instead, I'm going to start with an absolutely fresh Windows XP install, take a full snapshot of the entire installation on the hard drive, and burn that to a DVD (somewhat like a backup disc with an entire snapshot of my hard drive's current contents.) With every program I install, I'm going to take another snapshot, burn to DVD, and repeat the process until I have recreated every step taken to get to my current system state (all programs installed on a separate hard drive, all registry entries etc on the OS drive, with only snapshots of the OS drive being recorded.) The purpose for all of this I'm not legally allowed to talk about, due to confidentiality requirements. Does anybody know of such a program, preferably freeware, that will accomplish my objective, and are there tools that can be used to compare the difference in drive images?"
Instead of just making a copy after each install, make your copy after you install a program, then copy the original "clean" image back to the drive. Otherwise, you'll never know if a second program would have installed some files that the first program already installed.
Do the install in a virtual machine like VirtualBox or similar. Then you can do as many snapshots you like directly.
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You might of course just use any hard drive imaging tool, but this is rather slow and clumsy, and it will use a lot of disk space (which isn't necessarily a problem if you really wanna burn a DVD every time). It might be easier and quicker to use one that supports incremental backups. I like Acronis True Image a lot but it is not free.
If you mainly want to document changes done to a running system over time, virtualisation products might fit your purposes well. Most of them have some sort of ability to make snapshots. The popular free VMware Server only allows a single snapshot, but Sun's xVM is every bit as good and does multiple snapshots easily.
1. Download Linux Live CD (700mb).
2. Boot to Linux Live CD. Find out your hardware isn't supported as MoBo is new.
3. Download different Live CD.
4. Repeat 2 and 3.
5. Find Live CD which allows you to boot X. You're not a console monkey, so you need a GUI.
6a. Wireless network doesn't work "out of the box." Find / make 30m patch lead to go from back of PC downstairs to your router. Download NDISWrapper and firmware. Configure wireless networking. Alternatively;
6b. Look online for help using dd and sdiff, as you've never, ever heard of these applications.
7. Read three different forums full of "OMG go bk 2 winbl0wz, n00b!11" posts regarding the same issue until you find one person who has managed to pry the information you need out of somebody with a small sense of community.
8. Take image of Windows partition. Make coffee while you wait.
Total time to complete, with downloading images: 9 hours 40 minutes.
Total time to reinstall Windows XP, patch, and install games: 5 hours.
THAT'S how tough it is. We're not all Linux users.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
You really come off as an ungrateful whiner with your all caps and swearing. Considering you're asking a lot of people for free advice on something, maybe you could act with a bit more respect and some manners.