If you have a second drive or a second partition then you can use 'True
Image' (it has a 15 day trial version you can use) to create an image
backup. See: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Personally I took the gamble and installed SP2 without backing up (at the
time I had files on my PC I'd *prefer* not to lose, but it wouldn't be a
major problem). I had no problems whatsoever. I'd imagine the likelihood of
a failed SP2 installation causing you to resort to a backup is fairly low.

The essential thing is to back up your My Documents folder so that if
something goes very wrong you can recover your personal files if you have to
reinstall Windows and your apps.  This is very rare but can happen.

There is nothing to prevent you from just installing SP2 without the
precautions but the unlikliest can happen and when it does things get very
messy.

In any case- you should ALWAYS backup your stuff - periodically and on a
schedule.  It's just the wise thing to do.  It's wise to backup before any
major change in the system as well - and this is definitely a major change
(SP2 fundamentally changed Windows Xp in many ways.)

The question whether or not anyone has ever done it without backing up their
files would be 'sure' - and most of the time there is likely no problem.
But there is a chance and it has happened to others - that something goes
wrong and you lose everyhting and/or have to pay someone to get your stuff
back for you.

When people talk about backups - consider it anything you have
made/created/saved.  Documents, spreadsheets, pictures, emails, downloaded
files, internet explorer favorites, contacts, etc...

Another important issue, however, is Norton AV.

Don't do it.

No long-term visitor to this group would recommend Norton.

Norton AV is a resource hog and interferes with many, many operations. For
example, there are several applications that cannot be installed if Norton
is running. Further, Norton is the barnacle of the software world in that it
is difficult to remove.

Also, do you know what happens if a complete backup (System State + drives)
made on one computer is completely restored to another identical computer
(ignoring that any extra files on second computer will still remain);
what I mean is, does the restored system then keep the "product key"
of the original system, or assume that of the completely restored system?

Thank you.

System state backs up all but the dynamic portion of the hives (the portion
in a running system that would be meaningless to save anyway).

An image backup would backup and restore everything, but when the system
boots it builds a new hardware device list, compares it to the hardware
device list saved on the hard drive, and determines whether the new hardware
hash differs from the one at the last activation sufficiently to require
reactivation.  It has nothing to do with "saving" the product key, which is
always part of the hardware hash.

Another computer can be identical physically, but things like the MAC
address of the NIC will differ because each NIC has a unique MAC.  Identical
hard drives have different serial numbers.  And so on.

"John H Meyers" <jhmey...@nomail.invalid> wrote in message
news:op.t5y5l5eunn735j@miu.edu...

I was particularly interested (for myself as well) in the case that the "other"
computer is in fact the very same computer, particularly in the idea of using
*any* Windows CD (with any product code that it accepts)
that will put XP on the computer and enable running NTbackup,
followed by restoring the entire computer (including "System State"),
 from what was originally written as a complete backup
of that very same system, by that very same program.

The above does not completely nail down that this will work,
but certainly makes it seem likely that this "bootstrap" procedure would work,
even if the "interim" version of XP, installed solely for doing a restore,
would _not_ "activate" successfully, so long as the results of
_restoring_ the _backup_ would again be accepted as "genuine."

As I asked elsewhere, on XP Pro it is claimed that a complete system backup
can be fully restored anyway, using ASR -- aside from the extra recovery disk(s)
made by ASR, is there anything more than a normal full system backup (with System State)
that is needed to enable ASR to restore the entire system?

If ASR can in fact achieve a complete recovery, from such a backup,
then how can it continue being argued that such a recovery isn't possible,
without using other sorts of independent "disk image" backups?

Thanks for any help in getting to a final, true conclusion about this point,
which is whether a complete built-in System backup can be restored or not,
without any additional or separate "disk image" cloning or other backup system,
as seems to be an assertion of what comes built into XP Pro.