If you’re one of the unlucky people who bought a computer some years back with XP Home installed; you’ll notice that when it comes to making a backup of your files there’s no Windows backup included with the installed operating system by default. Rather than running out or browsing online and paying for a backup program, however, you can install a Windows backup program from your XP Home CD.

The drawback with this is that, unlike the Windows XP Backup facility that installs with XP professional by default; you won’t be able to make an Automated System Recovery disk – So in the event of needing to reinstall everything; say, on a replacement hard-disk after a disk-failure, for instance, you’ll have to format the disk, (Preferably in NTFS for XP.) install the XP Home operating system, install the backup program from the disk as per the following, and then install your files etc from the backup you made. All the same; it’s still a heck of a lot easier than starting from scratch again with a brand new installation; added to which you won’t lose your important files.

To add Windows backup to your XP Home installation, then, you’ll need an XP Home CD. It doesn’t have to be your original XP Home CD; just an XP Home CD. (This process assumes that you already have XP Home installed.)

Place the XP Home CD into your DVD-RW, DVD-ROM,, CD-RW, OR CD-ROM drive and allow Windows to read it. You’ll see the blue Windows install screen appear after a while: Click exit to get rid of it. Click Start > My Computer and find the drive that the CD is in. Right-click on that drive icon and click “Explore” in the dialog box that appears.

You’ll see a number of files that are on the CD appear in the window. Click on the “VALUEADD” folder. Now click on the “MSFT” folder. Now click on the “NTBACKUP” folder. You’ll see a file called “NTBACKUP.MSI” – Click on that folder and run it – That’ll install the backup files to your XP Home installation. Now close everything down and restart Windows XP Home.

To access your backup program; right-click on the disk that you want to back up and click “Properties”. On the “Tools” tab, select the backup feature…

Unlike as with XP Professional you still won’t be able to make an Automated System Recovery disk; so you’ll have to manually select everything on the disk and back it all up using the backup facility. Otherwise the backup utility is fully functional for both backing up and restoring files.