On the surface, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional doesn't introduce any dramatic new features to disk and file management—nothing as radical as changing from Microsoft File Manager to Microsoft Windows Explorer. You manage disks and files as you did in earlier versions of Microsoft Windows, using Windows Explorer. Shortcut menus and properties dialog boxes are similar, with exceptions you learn about in this chapter. Any user, novice or advanced, will be quite comfortable immediately after installing the operating system. For that reason, this chapter doesn't cover obvious features that you already know how to use. For example, it doesn't discuss moving, copying, or renaming files because these are obvious.
Dig a bit lower than the surface and you find a lot of changes that cause one or two headaches but, on the whole, put more power in your hands. This chapter shows you how to get the most out of those changes. Volume management is a bit different because of dynamic volumes. Disk management has new features and a new location—it's a snap-in in the Computer Management console. Microsoft threw the encrypting file system, directory junctions, and other innovations into the mix. The list of other new disk and file-management features is large. On the whole, most users don't use many of these features, though. After installing Windows 2000 Professional, most are happy just to leave the disk alone and do their work or play their games. The most common tasks that users perform are defragmenting their disks, checking disks for errors, compressing files, and cleaning disks to regain lost or wasted space. Thus, these are the tasks that this chapter focuses on most. This chapter also shows you how to schedule these tasks to happen automatically.
Defragmenting disks greatly improves their performance, particularly defragmenting the disk containing Windows 2000 Professional's boot files and your numerous program files. Microsoft Windows 98 users have long enjoyed the benefits of defragmenting their disks because it included a utility for that purpose. Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 users were out of luck or else they had to purchase a third-party tool for the same purpose, something they seldom did. Windows 2000 Professional brings you into parity with Windows 98 users, though; it includes Disk Defragmenter, which does an admirable job.
First, let me explain the big deal about defragmenting disks. The file system divides disks into clusters. The size of a cluster depends on variables such as the size of the disk and the way you format the disk. Ideally, when the operating system writes a file to the disk, it would write the file to contiguous clusters, one after another. That way, when the operating system reads the file, it doesn't have to look all over the disk for it. In the real world, though, the next available block of clusters isn't always big enough to contain the file it's trying to write. So, the operating system writes as much of the file to that block of clusters as it can and then moves on to the next free block of clusters. The result is a file that's fragmented and takes longer to load. A few fragmented files don't make much of a difference, but several thousand do.
Use Disk Defragmenter to make your computer work faster by reorganizing files so that they use contiguous space, as follows:
Using Disk Defragmenter requires that you log on to the computer as an administrator. Otherwise, it's usually a rosy process. Be aware of the following caveats, though:
You can use Disk Defragmenter to defragment one disk at a time, not multiple disks, and you can't use the utility on remote computers' disks.
Don't interrupt Disk Defragmenter while it's working. Doing so might cause it to start an already painful and long process over gain. Things that can interrupt this utility are running other programs and letting the screen saver open, both of which can cause Disk Defragmenter to think that it needs to rescan the disk for changes.
Disk Defragmenter can't defragment some files, so they'll always appear in the program's report. Those include ShellIconCache, Safeboot.fs, Safeboot.csv, Safeboot.rsv, and Bootsec.doc. Three files are unmovable system files: the NTFS Master File Table (MFT), the NTFS Master File Table Mirror, and the virtual memory paging file.
You can't schedule Disk Defragmenter to run automatically, not even via a script, which is a significant limitation for those folks who obsessively schedule this program in Windows 98 to keep their computer running well.
Disk Defragmenter fails to live up to expectations in two special situations. First, defragmenting fails if the paging file is very active. Second, it doesn't do a good job with disks that don't have a large amount of free space. The following two situations help you get around these problems.
An extremely fragmented paging file can cause Disk Defragmenter to fail. Windows 2000 Professional keeps locks open over active page files, and Disk Defragmenter can't defragment them if they are locked for exclusive use. The way to get around that is to create a new one (which requires that you have more than one volume):
In Control Panel, double-click the System icon.
On the Advanced tab, click Performance Options.
In the Performance Options dialog box, click Change in the Virtual memory area.
Change the paging file to another drive by setting the original paging file to 0 megabytes and making a temporary paging file on another drive. Figure 7.1 shows what this looks like. Make very sure that you create a page file on another drive because the operating system will not start properly if it doesn't find a page file.
Restart the computer so Windows 2000 Professional uses the new paging file.
Use Disk Defragmenter on the original disk to defragment its existing drives and consolidate the free space you created by moving the paging file.
Re-create the original paging file on the original drive and remove the temporary paging file by setting its size to 0 megabytes.
Disk Defragmenter doesn't work well on disks that don't have plenty of free space or are extremely fragmented. It requires a good amount of disk space to store parts of files until Disk Defragmenter is ready to recombine them in contiguous clusters. You know that this is a problem when you see a message that suggests defragmenting the disk even after you've already done so, or if you see an error that says you should make more space available. In any case, if Disk Defragmenter doesn't have enough disk space, it defragments only a small portion of the disk.
The easy solution is to remove the megabytes of temporary files that you've certainly collected. "Recovering Wasted Space," later in this chapter, shows you an easy way. In most cases, this frees enough space for it to work well.
Another solution is to temporarily move highly fragmented, large files to another volume, and then move them back to the original volume after defragmenting it. You can identify highly fragmented files by analyzing the disk and viewing the report using Disk Defragmenter. The last solution, which really isn't much of solution, is to repeatedly defragment the disk. You can repeat this process many, many times and never fully defragment the disk, however.
Checking a disk for errors is similar in all recent versions of Windows:
In My Computer, click Properties on a drive icon's shortcut menu.
On the Tools tab, click Check Now.
In the Check Disk dialog box, click Start.
The Check Disk dialog box has two options. I don't suggest that you select the Automatically fix file system errors check box because this is a process that you're better off controlling yourself. If you want to scan the disk for physical errors, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box.
Before checking your disk for errors, make sure that you close all running applications. Most applications lock files open, preventing Check Disk from working properly. If you forget, Check Disk asks you whether you want to schedule it to run the next time you start the computer. If you do, Check Disk runs prior to your logging on to the computer, ensuring that no applications are running. The only caveat is that you can't use the computer at all while Check Disk is working because you can't log on to Windows 2000 Professional. After starting the computer, Check Disk does give you a few seconds to change your mind before it gets to work.
You're not going to have many occasions to use Check Disk with NTFS, except for the random, dramatic power outage. Check Disk comes in handy, however, if you're still using the FAT file system. During the beta, users reported some problems with FAT that were easily remedied. When you do run Check Disk on an NTFS volume, it replaces bad clusters automatically and stores duplicate copies of key information for all files on the drive.
Can't start Windows 2000 Professional? If you suspect the problem is a disk error, you can run Check Disk from Recovery Console. For more about Recovery Console, see Chapter 2, "Troubleshooting Setup." The operating system also supplies a command-line Check Disk, which is often more convenient. Its options look like this:
Syntax: CHKDSK [drive[[path]filename]]] [/f] [/v] [/r] [/x] [/i] [/c] [/l[:size]]
Options:
Most users simply use the command chkdsk /f /r, which automatically scans the disk for errors and repairs any that it finds.
See Also
Chapter 2, "Troubleshooting Setup," for more information about Recovery Console and other Windows 2000 Professional troubleshooting tools.
NTFS compression can conserve dramatic amounts of disk space. In a scenario such as mine, in which I have hundreds of megabytes of manuscripts, I reduce the size of documents by about 50 percent. Although pure binary files don't compress quite as much, compression might mean the difference between chocking out a few hundred dollars for a new hard drive and being able to use Disk Defragmenter. Note that because of the large sizes of disks that come with most computers today, disk compression isn't generally required. It's more useful for servers than it is for desktop computers because few people actually find a way to fill 13 gigabytes.
Windows 2000 Professional's compression feature differs from similar features in other software. It doesn't limit you to compressing entire drives. Compress individual directories and files, too. As well as NTFS compression's flexibility, compression is built in to the NTFS file system, which results in a scheme that performs better than others. To compress a drive, directory, or file on an NTFS volume (you can't do this on FAT volumes), do one of the following:
To compress a drive, click Properties on its shortcut menu, and select the Compress drive to save disk space check box (see Figure 7.2).
To compress a directory, click Properties in its shortcut menu, click Advanced, select the Compress contents to save disk space check box, and then do one of the following:
To compress a file, click Properties on its shortcut menu, click Advanced, and select the Compress contents to save disk space check box.
Windows 2000 Professional doesn't report the results of compression as a percentage. Click Properties on a disk, directory, or file's shortcut menu; on the General tab, note the size and size on disk. With compression, the size is greater than the size on disk. To get an actual percentage, divide the difference between the size and size on disk by the size: (size—size on disk/size). For example, the compression percentage of a 49-kilobyte file that the operating system compressed to 28 kilobytes is around 43 percent. Not bad at all.
Windows NT 4.0 users are familiar with its compression feature, which is the same in Windows 2000 Professional. If you're upgrading from Windows 98, however, be aware of the differences in the way both implement this feature:
Windows 98 supports only compressed drives. It doesn't allow you to compress individual files and directories. Windows 2000 Professional supports compressing individual files and directories on existing NTFS volumes, on the other hand, which means that if you have a particularly big file or a directory containing big files, you can compress them individually without compressing the drive.
In Windows 98, you use DriveSpace or DoubleSpace to create com-pression volumes on host drives. It then stores the entire compressed drive's contents in that compressed volume, which is a single file. Windows 2000 Professional stores compressed files on the existing NTFS volume without requiring you to create a compressed volume on a host. Windows 2000 Professional does not support DriveSpace or DoubleSpace disk-compression.
Although Windows 2000 Professional's compression feature uses algorithms similar to Windows 98, it's more efficient. It doesn't significantly degrade the operating system's performance.
Note
Two key Windows 2000 Professional features are mutually exclusive of compression. First, the operating system can't compress encrypted files; you can't have your cake and eat it too! You also can't compress offline files. Even if you compress the offline files cache, the operating system doesn't compress its contents. The reason is that the operating system might hang or not update the cache properly if it allowed you to compress the cache.
You have more disk space available than you think. It's just wasted. Unused temporary files tend to gobble up huge amounts of space because too many programs don't clean up their temporary files when they're done with them. Microsoft Word 2000 frequently leaves several megabytes of temporary files lying around in a documents directory. When most programs crash, and it happens often, they don't clean up after themselves. Rampaging through your file system and manually removing temporary files isn't a good idea because you're more likely to make mistakes.
Disk Cleanup is a tool that safely removes temporary and otherwise unnecessary files. Recently, it removed over half a gigabyte of space for me. Here's how to use it:
On a drive's shortcut menu, click Properties, and then click Disk Cleanup.
Expect a long pause while Disk Cleanup scans the disk to see how much space it can free. When it finishes, you see the dialog box shown in Figure 7.3.
On the Disk Cleanup tab, select the check box next to each type of temporary files you want to remove in the Files to delete area. Choices are the following:
When you select all but the last two items in the Files to delete list, click View Files to see a list of the files that Disk Cleanup proposes to remove. Using Disk Cleanup is usually quiet and safe, but check this list if you have any doubt about what it's going to do.
The last two items, Compress Old Files and Catalog Files for the Content Indexer are special and require a bit more discussion. When you select the Compress Old Files check box, Disk Cleanup compresses a file that you haven't used in 50 days. To change the length of time after which it compresses a file, click Options. Don't do this right after installing Windows 2000 Professional, however, because it will compress a lot of files that you probably don't want to compress. Wait a few months and then use Disk Cleanup to compress old files; you can then be sure that it compresses only infrequently used files. The next option, Catalog Files for the Content Indexer, causes Disk Cleanup to remove files that the Indexing Service created when it indexed the disk's files.
Windows 2000 Professional supports two different kinds of disks, both of which you manage using Disk Management:
Basic disks . Basic disks are physical disks that contain primary partitions, extended partitions, and logical drives. These are the kinds of disks that you've been using all along and created using Fdisk.exe. In Windows 2000 Professional, FT Disk manages basic disks as it did in Windows NT Workstation 4.0. Windows 2000 Professional can use volume, mirror, and stripe sets (with or without parity) on basic disks, but cannot create them. As well, the operating system can't extend basic disks online; you must restart the computer.
Dynamic volumes . In Windows 2000 Professional, Logical Disk Manager (LDM) manages dynamic disks. These are physical disks that contain dynamic volumes instead of partitions and logical drives. You create and manage logical disks using Disk Management. Because Windows 2000 Professional is the only Microsoft operating system that supports dynamic volumes, don't plan on using dynamic volumes in a dual-boot configuration with another operating system. Still, they have some nice features of basic disks. You can extend volumes online without restarting the computer. They support fault tolerance, disk mirroring, and disk striping.
Types of dynamic volumes are simple, spanned, mirrored, striped, and striped with parity (RAID-5). Simple volumes aren't fault-tolerant; they can also span multiple disks. When a simple volume spans multiple disks, it's a spanned volume. Striped volumes alternate data across two or more physical disks, bettering the computer's performance by dividing the work between two disks. The enhancement to your computer's performance can be significant. Mirrored volumes protect your data against disk failure. They duplicate data on multiple disks so that if one disk fails, the computer still operates properly. Windows 2000 Professional doesn't support RAID-5, by the way; this is an honor reserved for Windows 2000 Server.
You manage basic and dynamic disks using Disk Management. To use this tool, you must log on to the computer as an administrator. Figure 7.4 shows it with four drives, a basic fixed disk, a dynamic fixed disk, and two CD-ROM drives. To start Disk Management, double-click the Administrative Tools icon in Control Panel, double-click the Computer Management icon, and click Disk Management. Windows NT Workstation 4.0 users should already be familiar with this tool's capabilities. Just note that you access a disk's shortcut menu by right-clicking the disk and a volume's shortcut menu by right-clicking the volume.
Figure 7.4. Click a disk's shortcut menu to manage the disk. Click a volume's shortcut menu to manage the volume.
Windows 2000 Professional supports varieties of file systems on basic and dynamic disks. It introduces a new file system, Universal Disk Format (UDF), and extends NTFS to version 5. And, yes, it still supports all the old file systems such as FAT, FAT32, and CDFS:
FAT . Otherwise known as FAT16, FAT has been around since the dawn of Microsoft MS-DOS. In Windows 2000 Professional, the maximum partition size for FAT is 4 gigabytes.
FAT32 . Microsoft introduced FAT32 with Microsoft Windows 95 OSR2. It uses cluster sizes that are smaller than FAT16, making about 20 percent more disk space available. The maximum partition size is 2 terabytes, but Windows 2000 Professional can create FAT32 partitions only up to 32 gigabytes.
CDFS . CD-ROM File System (CDFS) is the file system that the operating system uses to read CD-ROM drives. In Windows 2000 Professional, CDFS meets the Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9660 specification.
UDF, a new file system defined by the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), is compliant with the ISO-13346 specification. It's the successor to CDFS. ISO designed this file system for use by digital videodiscs (DVD) and CD-ROMs, as well as for exchanging data between incompatible operating systems. It supports long Unicode filenames. Windows 2000 Professional supports UDF 1.5, but the operating system can only read UDF at the moment.
Nothing new about NTFS; it's been a part of Windows NT since its first version. Windows 2000 Professional introduces version 5 of NTFS, however, and this is the file system that I recommend you use. It's secure, it has native file compression built into it, files are recoverable when errors occur, and it supports encryption. The list of reasons why you should use NTFS is endless. The only reason that you might not use NTFS is if you created a dual- boot configuration with Windows 2000 Professional and another operating system, such as Windows 98, that can't read NTFS volumes. To learn more about the differences between each of the file systems, see Table 7.1. For each file system, it shows the minimum partition size, maximum partition size, and maximum file system. It also shows the operating systems that support each.
| Minimum Partition Size | Maximum Partition Size | Maximum File Size | OS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FAT16 | N/A | 2 GB | 2 GB | Windows 3.1 Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows NT 3.1 Windows NT 3.5 Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 4.0 Windows 2000 |
| FAT32 | 512 MB | 2 TB | 4 GB | Windows 95 OSR2 Windows 98 Windows 2000 |
| NTFS 4 | 20 MB | 15 EB (exabytes) | N/A | Windows NT 3.1 Windows NT 3.5 Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 4.0 Windows 2000 |
| NTFS 5 | 20 MB | 15 EB | N/A | Windows NT 4.0 |
See Also
Chapter 1, "Installing Windows," contains much more information about each file system, which helps you determine which file system to choose as you're installing the operating system.
Mount points are one of the most innovative new features in NTFS 5. They allow you to graft a volume onto any directory, which causes the operating system to resolve that directory to the root of the mounted volume. In other words, rather than assigning a drive letter to a volume, you assign a path to it. This abolishes the limit of 26 drive letters. With mount points, instead of using a drive letter to identify a volume, you use its path.
Microsoft built mount points for administrators to simplify their lives. It allows them to add storage to a computer without overly disturbing a volume's namespace and without that awful restriction on drive letters. They can scale up the storage for user profiles, for example, by mounting additional volumes to an existing volume. Microsoft uses the term sticky to refer to mount points, meaning that changes in the device's name, which occur due to configuration changes, don't break it. They're just as useful for power users, though. You can move all your documents to a second volume, for example, and then mount it to UserProfileMy DocumentsPersonal. Another example is mounting a second volume to Program Files so you can better manage your applications.
You must log on to the computer as an Administrator to mount volumes because you do so using Disk Management. The process is somewhat like assigning a drive letter to a volume. On its shortcut menu, click Change Drive Letter and Path, and click Add to add a mount point or click Edit to change the current one. For example, you can leave the volume's existing drive letter assignment alone and add a mount point. You can also replace the current drive letter assignment with a mount point.
Microsoft Windows Backup is a significant improvement that administrators probably love more than power users. Still, if you have useful backup media and you're good about backing up your computer, you'll appreciate how much easier and more reliable this utility is now. Even if you don't have useful backup media, you can now back up files to another disk or to the network. Aside from shedding the archaic look of its predecessor by using a tabbed user interface that's similar to Windows 98's backup utility, it also includes a handful of wizards that make the backup process painless.
Some of Windows Backup's features are more useful for Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. Active Directory is an example. Remote Storage Service is another that's more useful in a server environment, so I don't discuss it here. The remaining features of Windows Backup are appropriate for Windows 2000 Professional. It can archive files and folders, restoring them when necessary. It can create emergency repair disks that help you start the operating system when something has gone terribly wrong. It can make a copy of the computer's system state, which includes the registry, boot files, and Certificate Services database. You learn about these features in the following sections.
As with most system tools in Windows 2000 Professional, you must have the appropriate rights. You must log on to the computer as a member of the local Administrators or Backup Operators groups to back up or restore any file or folder on the local computer. If you're a member of the domain Administrators or Backup Operators groups, you can back up or restore any file or folder on any computer in the domain, assuming that it has a two-way trust relationship with the domain (member workstations usually do). If you aren't a member of either group, you must have no less than read permission to any file that you want to back up, or you must have the following rights on the domain or locally:
To start Windows Backup, on the Start menu, point to Programs, followed by Accessories and System Tools, and click Backup. Then, do one of the following:
To back up your computer, click Backup Wizard and follow the instructions you see onscreen.
To restore your computer, click Restore Wizard and follow the instructions you see onscreen.
Here are some additional notes:
As an Administrator or Backup Operator, you can back up and restore all files, even if you don't have read permission for them. When you restore those files, whether to the same or a different computer, the Backup program restores their original permissions and you won't be able to read files that you couldn't already read.
Windows Backup can back up encrypted files. The program stores them encrypted on the tape or backup media—it doesn't decrypt them first—and also restores them encrypted. If you're looking for a way to recover a file when you've lost the certificate required to decrypt it, see the section "Encrypting Files" later in this chapter.
Windows 2000 Professional doesn't back up all files in every folder; Windows Backup keeps in the registry a list of files and folders that it and other Windows 2000-compatible backup utilities exclude. The two subkeys, FilesNotToBackup and FilesNotToRestore—both subkeys of HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlBackupRestore—are where Windows Backup stores this information. Each contains REG_MULTISZ values whose contents indicate a file or a folder to exclude from the backup. Note that Windows Backup has similar settings for registry subkeys that it won't restore in KeysNotToRestore.
Caution
Some of the more ill-behaved applications might not work properly after restoring a full system backup. These applications don't use long filenames properly and rely solely on short filenames. Recall that Windows 2000 Professional appends a tilde and a number, name~N, to distinguish between short filenames. It does this if two files' short filenames would be identical even though their long filenames are not: All My Stuff.doc and All My Stuffing.doc. When Windows Backup restores files, it does so in alphabetical order and creates new short filenames for them. Because you didn't necessarily create those files and folders in the same order, these programs might not find the files for which they're looking.
Emergency Repair Disks (ERDs) are limited. They can help you start a computer when other methods fail. An ERD has no data, program files, or settings; but it contains enough information to make basic repairs to the system files, partition boot sector, or startup environment. Start the Setup program and then use the ERD to restore these core system files. There is a catch, though. You must create the ERD while the computer is healthy and before something bad happens, requiring you to maintain it on a regular basis. Waiting until your computer fails is not the time to decide you need to update its ERD. Also, all computers must have their own ERDs and you can't use one computer's ERD on another, no matter how desperate you are to fix it and get a raise. Even with all the limitations, the first thing you should do immediately after changing your computer's configuration is to update your ERD.
The program you used in Windows NT Workstation 4.0 to create ERDs, Repair Disk Utility, is not available in Windows 2000 Professional. Microsoft Windows Backup is the program responsible for that capability now. Adding Repair Disk Utility to Windows Backup is sensible because backing up a computer and creating an ERD are similar in nature. To create an ERD using Windows Backup, click Emergency Repair Disk on the Welcome tab.
Windows Backup does not create a copy of the ERD in SystemRoot Repair as Repair Disk Utility did, and it does not copy the registry hive files to the ERD at all. Instead, if you choose to do so on the Emergency Repair Diskette dialog box, it backs up the registry hive files to SystemRootRepair Regback—the same location to which it backs them up when you back up System State data. Also, SystemRootRepair always contains a copy of the original hive files that the Setup program created when you first installed Windows 2000 Professional. You should never change or remove these files because you might need them to troubleshoot the computer in extreme circumstances or if you change the administrator password and forget it. The files on the ERD, which are small in number, include the following:
Using an ERD to repair the computer relies on the Setup program, but it is really not difficult. First, start the Setup program—Winnt.exe and not Winnt32.exe—by starting the computer with MS-DOS and running it, by starting the computer with the Setup boot disks, or by booting the computer with the Windows 2000 Professional CD-ROM, if you happen to have a bootable CD-ROM drive. If the Setup program doesn't find any disks with a FAT partition, you must use one of the latter two options because the Setup program complains that it can't find a place for its swap file if you start it from MS-DOS and don't have any FAT partitions. When the Setup program first starts, it asks whether you want to install Windows 2000 or repair an installation. That's where the following instructions begin:
Press R again to choose the emergency repair process, not the recovery console, and do one of the following:
Press M to choose whether you want to repair the system files, partition boot sector, or startup environment. I don't recommend this option.
Press F to automatically repair the system files, partition boot sector, startup environment, and registry, as long as a backup copy of the registry hive files exist in SystemRootRepairRegback.
Windows Backup puts the registry and other data together, calling the whole thing System State data. System State data include the registry, the COM+ Class Registration database, and boot files. Windows 2000 Professional adds even more to System State data. Backing up and restoring System State data is an all-or-nothing deal. However, you can restore System State data to alternative locations and then restore portions of it manually. Windows Backup restores only the registry, SYSVOL directory, and boot files to an alternative location—not the remaining parts of System State data.
Here are the different ways to back up System State data:
To back up System State data as part of a regular backup, select the System State check box on the Backup tab, as shown in Figure 7.5.
To back up selected files on the computer, including System State data, click Back up selected files, drives, or network data in Backup Wizard and then select the System State check box on the Backup tab.
To back up all files on the computer, including System State data, click Back up everything on my computer in Backup Wizard.
To back up only System State data, click Only back up the System State data in Back Wizard.
Figure 7.5. Select the System State data check box to back up the Windows 2000 Professional's System State data.
Windows Backup does back up the entire registry, but doesn't necessarily restore it all. It identifies hives using HKLMsystemCurrentControlSet Controlhivelist. The backup data therefore includes HKU, the hive that contains per-user settings for each logged-on account. Windows Backup copies hives to static files, and adds the static files to the backup data. Restoration is more complicated. Subkeys of HKLMSYSTEM that Windows Backup does not copy from the old registry to the new are in HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlBackupRestore KeysNotToRestore. The result is that Windows Backup does not restore any subkey listed in KeysNotToRestore. And Windows Backup doesn't restore any subkey in this list that ends with a backslash (). If a subkey ends with an asterisk (*), Windows Backup doesn't restore it or any of its subkeys, the whole subtree.
Windows Backup can't back up System State data on remote computers. It backs up files on remote computers via their administrative shares (ADMIN$, C$, D$, and so on), but doesn't have capabilities to access a remote computer's registry via RPCs (remote procedure calls), as does Microsoft Registry Editor. Don't rely on it as a way to protect client computers' System State data unless you actually run Windows Backup on each locally.
Restoring System State data is the same process in reverse. Be careful, however, because System State data get out-of-date rather quickly. Use Restore Wizard and, in the What to restore list, select the System State check box. You can do likewise on the Restore tab. Windows Backup restores System State data, including the registry, COM+ Class Registration database, and boot files. You might still run into problems with programs losing their settings, but this happens only if you installed the application after you made the backup data you're restoring. Most applications can restore their settings in the registry, however.