To use Windows Defender Offline Beta, follow these steps:

1. Download Windows Defender Offline Beta and create a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive.
2. Restart your PC using the Windows Defender Offline Beta media.
3. Scan your PC for malicious and other potentially unwanted software.
4. Remove any malware that is found from your PC.
   

It is recommended that you download Windows Defender Offline Beta and create the CD, DVD, or USB flash drive on a PC that isn’t infected with malware and run the version that matches your installed system. To check the operating system version on computers running Windows Vista or Windows 7, click the Start button, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.

• If “64-bit Operating System” is listed next to System type, you’re running the 64-bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7.
• If “32-bit Operating System” is listed next to System type, you’re running the 32-bit version of Windows Vista or Windows 7.

To download the latest Windows Defender 32-bit or 64-bit beta version go here:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

To understand better IPSec take a look at this practical example where Telnet traffic between two hosts in a Windows AD (Active Directory) environment is encrypted using IPSec.

• File backup: Windows Backup allows you to make copies of data files. You can let Windows choose what to back up or you can select the individual folders, libraries, and drives that you want to back up. By default, your backups are created on a regular schedule. You can change the schedule and you can manually create a backup at any time. Once you set up Windows Backup, Windows keeps track of the files and folders that are new or modified and adds them to your backup. To set up file backup, see the following backup steps
• System image backup: Windows Backup provides you with the ability to create a system image, which is an exact image of a drive. A system image includes Windows and your system settings, programs, and files. You can use a system image to restore the contents of your computer if your hard drive or computer ever stops working. When you restore your computer from a system image, it is a complete restoration; you can’t choose individual items to restore, and all of your current programs, system settings, and files are replaced. Although this type of backup includes your personal files, we recommend that you back up your files regularly using Windows Backup so that you can restore individual files and folders as needed. When you set up scheduled file backup, you can choose whether you want to include a system image. This system image only includes the drives required for Windows to run. You can manually create a system image if you want to include additional data drives. See an automated system image backup example 
• Previous versions: Previous versions are copies of files and folders that Windows automatically saves as part of system protection. You can use previous versions to restore files or folders that you accidentally modified or deleted, or that were damaged. Depending on the type of file or folder, you can open, save to a different location, or restore a previous version. Previous versions can be helpful, but should not be considered a backup because the files get replaced by new versions and will not be available if the drive were to fail. For more information, see Shadow Copies

Backing up the data file

The folk who decided on the default location of the Outlook data file chose a location that is difficult to figure out.  Also when installing Outlook (or when running it for the first time) there is no way to specify a different folder.

Changing the default location

The first thing I am going to demonstrate in this tutorial is how to move your existing Outlook files to a more humane location under the Windows 7 Documents (or Windows XP My Documents) folders.

Open Outlook which I am assuming you are already running.

1. Right click on the Personal Folders entry (1) and choose the option Properties for ‘Personal Folders’ from the short cut menu that comes up. If your folder has a different name, Personal Folders will be called differently.
2. A dialog box titled Outlook Today – (Personal Folders) Properties comes up. Click on the Advanced… button (2).
3. This brings up yet another dialog box titled Personal Folders. The Filename: entry (3) depicts the location of where your Outlook data file currently resides.
4. Copy the directory location from the Filename: entry and paste it into a Windows Explorer window.
5. Click OK on all the dialog boxes you have just opened and shut down Outlook.
6. Move the folder that contains the Outlook files to a more appropriate location. I would suggest under %USERPROFILE%\Documents if you’re using Windows 7 and %USERPROFILE%\My Documents if you’re still happily using Windows XP.

Click on the Microsoft Outlook 2007 icon to run the program. Since you have moved the original location of the data file, you will get a message box telling you that Outlook can no longer find the pst file in its original location (1).

Clicking OK on the dialog box brings up a file selection screen that allows you to specify the new location where you had shifted your Outlook data files. Move to the new location, click on the pst file and hit the Open Button (2).

Another message box comes up to tell you that Outlook must be restarted. OK that.

The second time onwards Microsoft Outlook 2007 will automatically find your files no questions asked. And the directory where all your important emails reside is now in an easy to find location in your Documents folder together with all your other important stuff.

Backing up the registry

Microsoft Outlook retains your email account settings within the registry. This means that when the time comes to reinstall your computer, unless you have saved your registry Outlook settings you will have to re-enter all the email accounts you process using Outlook 2007. If you happen to have a single Gmail account this might not be that much of a problem (provided you still remember how to do it) but if, like me, you have almost a dozen email accounts flowing into your Outlook remembering each mailbox’s parameters can be time consuming.

A word of warning about handling the registry: unlike many programs, the registry program does not have an undo or an undelete option and changes go into effect immediately. If you delete a file by mistake you can pull it out of limbo by visiting the Recycle Bin. If you screw up a document, pressing undo will take you back one action at a time until you reach the stage before the oops or, if necessary, you can abandon all changes done during that session simply by not saving the updated document. None of this exists in the registry so be cautious.

In Windows 7, type regedit in the Search Programs and Files to run the registry program. With Windows XP, type the same command in the Run… box. Both options can be accessed from the Start Menu. Windows 7 will bring up a dialog box asking you to confirm your action. You should say yes in order to run the program.

Navigate to the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows Messaging Subsystem\Profiles (1). Each profile you have defined will appear under this key. In my case there is one profile called Outlook.

Right click on Outlook and choose the option Export from the menu that comes up. I suggest that you place the registry snippet you are saving in the same location as the Outlook data files. This ensures that all your Microsoft Outlook related data is in one easy-to-backup folder.

End of part 1 – Conclusion

By backing up the folder to an online backup service you can rest assured that whenever something happens to your computer all your emails and the mailbox settings can be retrieved with ease. If you add a new email account or remove one you no longer use, you should export the registry settings again.

When backing up your Outlook data files, Outlook should be shut down.

Although I have not mentioned Windows Vista, the procedure for Windows 7 is almost identical to that of Windows Vista.

Next time I will describe how to use the information you have saved to restore your Microsoft Outlook 2007 in case of corruption. I’ll also throw in how you can use this backed up data when upgrading your computer from Windows XP to Windows 7.

We all appreciate how important emails are to us. Back them up regularly.

Click Back up files button

Alternatively, you can create a complete backup of your entire computer by clicking the Back up computer button and follow the simple wizard :)

email notification

The native backup utility found on Windows servers is one cool application that has saved many SMBs real cash!  Apart from fulfilling its main functionality, it is found to be very reliable and effective. Problems arise when extra features are required such as, backing up to external storage devices and/or utilizing advanced backup features! One useful feature that is standard in purchasable applications is email notification of backup jobs. The script below gives you that functionality!!!! It’s free and simple to implement!!!!

The implementation steps of the script are as follows:

1. Create a backup job using Windows backup – Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Backup and set a job schedule
2. Open the window Scheduled Tasks – Start/Control Panel/Scheduled Tasks and find the newly created scheduled job.
3. From the properties window of this job copy the highlighted text from the Run text field
4. Copy this text in a new batch file called ‘mybackup.bat’ (any name you like without quotes)
5. Take a note of the batch file location and enter the full path in the Run text field of step 3 ex: c:\documents\mybackup.bat
6. Close the properties window by clicking OK and enter an admin password if prompted
7. Add the sample script shown below in the batch file after the text entered in step 4
8. Edit the script text to reflect your email & path settings

Sample script

Copied text from step 3 goes here

@echo off
set Sender=”source email addess”
set Receiver=”your email address”
set Host=”IP address of source email server”
set Subject=”Backup name/title”

set logdir=”%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data”
REM ex – C:\Documents and Settings\administrator\ for %USERPROFILE%
set result=”%temp%\latestlog.txt”

pushd %logdir%
for /f “tokens=1 delims=” %%I in (‘dir /B /O-D’) do (
 if “%%~xI”==”.log” (
   type “%%~fI” > %result%
   goto :end
   )
 )
:end
popd

c:\windows\system32\blat.exe %result% -f %Sender% -to %Receiver% -server %Host% -subject %Subject%
del /q /f “%result%”

explanation

Explanation of the sample script:

 pushd
==> stores the current directory for use by the POPD command, then change to the specified directory

for /f “tokens=1 delims=” %%I in (‘dir /B /O-D’) do
=> parse each line of the directory listing (log files) and get the name of each file one by one

dir /B /O-D  ==> remove heading info from directory list, and list files by date in reverse order

until
if “%%~xI”==”.log”
==>if the current file (its extension only) is .log

then
type “%%~fI” > %result%
==> then copy the contents of the current log file to the variable file latestlog.txt

c:\windows\system32\blat.exe  ==> Blat is a Win32 command line utility that sends eMail using SMTP – http://www.blat.net/?docs/credits.html