Free programs help with backup

In this Part 3 of my Backing up tutorial I’ll mention a few additional free backup utility programs I recommend you consider.

Google’s Chrome: To backup Chrome’s Bookmarks (Favorites) you can click on the little wrench (Customize and control Google Chrome) in the upper right of Chrome’s menu bar. Then click on Bookmark manager, Tools and Export Bookmarks. By default you may be directed to your Download folder. I suggest you relocate the Bootmarks.html file
to a Chrome Bookmark sub folder in your Documents/My Documents folder.

But if you’d like an excellent free Chrome backup utility that has a wizard to guide you through the steps necessary to backup Chrome’s Bookmarks to a Documents\My Documents sub folder you’ve created, go to Parhelia Tools (www.parhelia tools.com). This little utility will create, backup, restore and manage Chrome profiles which include history and bookmarks. It also creates a convenient Desktop shortcut to remind you to keep your Chrome data backup current.

Note: BackRex for IE 7/8 (www.backsettings.com) is a free utility that’ll guide you through the steps necessary to backup IE’s favorites, history auto passwords and cookies.

Belarc (www.belarc.com/free_download.html) and WinAudit (www.pxserver.com) are two free utilities that’ll build a profile of your computer hardware and software.
* Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks.
* WinAudit is a software program that provides an in-depth audit of your computer.

Note: I suggest you use Belarc Advisor as a handy source of information for your technician should you have a problem. Rather than store its data in your Documents\My Documents, print the data out for easy access should your system crash.

WinAudit on the other hand produces a document too lengthy to be printed. My WinAudit is 1600 PDF pages. Store WinAudit in a Documents\My Document sub folder. It’s value is its "soup to nuts" inventory of your computer available should you or our technician need information on anything from hardware to software. It’s awesome.
* Erunt (Emergency Recovery Utility NT): Google it for a down load site. Erunt backs up your registry to restore if needed. Because it keeps each Registry backup in a separate folder, I have found it to be more reliable than XP\Vista System Restore utility.

Note: Vista users must right click on Erunt’s shortcut and click on "Run as Administrator".

Here's wishing you a Good Boot