Janette, The default backup location of the 'Windows Backup Utility' is the 'Floppy' drive. Under 'Choose a place to save your backup', click the 'browse' button and select a location on your drive, maybe your documents folder, to save the backup and give it a name. You should then be able to use your recording software to copy this file to CD or DVD. I have an external, Western Digital 120, hard drive that I bought at Best Buy a few years ago. Usually the drives will come with a backup software, mine came with 'Dantz Retrospect', but I haven't used it. I use a couple different options for backup. I use 'Acronis True Image', a drive imaging software, which I can use to restore an exact replica of my drive, operating system, settings, documents, etc., from a partition on my external drive to my internal drive in case of internal drive failure or corruption. I also just use the 'copy and paste' feature to backup 'My Documents' to the external drive even though it is redundant and not necessary because I can also retrieve files from the 'Acronis' image. Just 'putzin'. Witz Here is a link that might be useful: Windows Backup Utility

How do you get yourself into these problems? Because you have a problem and are trying to fix it rather than ignore it or dump your problem on someone else. I find that to be very admirable. The good thing about this is you will be learning a lot in the process of getting things back on track. The down side is it is going to take a little bit of time if we do it here. Your are very lucky because there is a lot of experience her and, super people willing to help. There should be no fear of what to do with what fix-it finds if you decide to go that route. They offer several bits of information as to what found information does, and a suggestion of what you should let fix-it do, to fix your computer. You can undo anything fix-it does, with the click of a button. If you go to do anything that will screw things up, fix-it will tell you. If anything in any of the steps does not agree with what you see on the screen, don't continue and get back to us and let us know what the discrepancy is. There are several reasons why you might not be getting to the desk top you are used to and rather than a bunch of mumbo jumbo and jargon, we'll start with the simplest reason first. From what I gather at this point, you have multiple issues that are not necessarily "Computer Problems". To best help you get on track using a forum like this, I suggest we take one issue at a time. There are several ways to skin a cat so I am going to use what I know will get you to where you want to be. Of course, if you know a faster way that works for you, no problem, as long as we both get to where we want to be. We don't know what you know so if we describe a step that you well know, it is not to insult your intelligence or belittle you, it's just to get you where you need to be in a step by step manner. 1....The folder that YOU created named "desk top", rename it to "My Icons" and do so without the start and end quotes. The folder you created, from what you indicated here, has a space between the words "desk" and "top". That's the one you want to rename. 2....Click on the START button at the bottom left of you computer screen. Look for "My Computer" and click on that. 3....RIGHT click Local Drive (C:) In the left column at the top, you should see "Desktop" with no space between desk and top. Looking down a little further, you should see C: with a plus next to it. Click on that plus. When it expands, look down the list and you should see the renamed directory "My Icons" that you did previously. Click on that and in the right column, everything you moved should be listed there. 4....At the top of this window click on EDIT and when the menu drops down, click on SELECT ALL. Everything in the right column should become highlighted, usually in blue. 5....Take your mouse pointer over to the highlighted column click down on the LEFT mouse button and HOLD IT DOWN. While holding it down, drag everything over to the left column and up to the "DESKTOP", at the top of the left column. You will see the DESKTOP change color when you are on it and at that point, let up on the mouse button. Make sure you are on the DESKTOP name and that it highlights because if you don't, you may move everything into another directory, compounding the issue!!! Everything should now be back the way it was before you moved your desk top. If everything is back to what you are used to, we'll take the next step. My particular next step is going to ask for a list of everything in the task manager under the tab "PROCESSES". Do a "Ctrl" "Alt" "Delete". When the task manager pops up, click on the "Processes" tab. After you enter this tab, hover your pointer over the words "User Name". This will be the name of one of the columns. You have to hover over the actual words. Left click that and you will see everything organize itself. If you could then get us a list as it appears on your screen, we can work on the next steps. I have to go on an errand so it might be some time before I get back to you, I live in a rural area. Someone else here may pick up where I left off, I have no problem with that. The beauty of this particular forum is many knowledgeable people willing to help.

Gms, I don't do major backups either when updating, I just do work backups as I exit but the IE8 run wizard recommended it. I never worried but now do as my puter is getting antiquated and have seen all those complaints re IE8 that maybe I shouldn't take a chance. I was looking for IE7 but couldn't find the link to upgradeto that at MS. From what Mikie states it probably doesn't really matter what I upgrade to first. I'll let auto do that tonight and run IE8 tomorrow with or w/o full backup. I have Mozilla Firefox and will add another browser from recommendations seen here.

For Macs, SuperDuper is what I use and feel comfortable recommending to friends. Besides being very reliable, it tells exactly what is going on, meaning you are copying from where and to where--this assumes a backup involving an external hard drive. It also can make a bootable clone, meaning that you can start up and run your computer from the external hard drive when the internal drive is hosed. (You wouldn't want to run this way without making another copy for safety.) CarbonCopyCloner will make a bootable clone but had a cryptic interface, meaning it was difficult for non-technical users to be sure about what direction the copy would take. The CCC interface may have changed, but I've moved on with SuperDuper. The problem I have with Retrospect is that it copies files in a format that is not the same as your internal hard drive, so you cannot pull an individual file from it & you must restore using a computer that has another copy of Retrospect. This makes it difficult to determine that you are actually getting a good backup copy. SuperDuper can be run for free to try it out; when you pay the small license fee, you can run a Smart Backup, which copies what has changed to your backup for a fraction of the time required to do a full copy. A Restore operation should be just as simple and straightforward to do as the backup copy--only the direction is reversed. Not all backup software provides this. SuperDuper does. Apple's Time Machine is convenient in that it runs without operator direction, but Time Machine is too time consuming & complicated to use for a full restore. I use Time Machine only for having protection for my most recent files. The best strategy involves more than one backup copy, with at least one of them offsite, either an external hard drive or remote storage service. If you rely on external hard drives, you should backup daily & rotate them weekly.