Why I like Windows 7 so much....

Because.... It saves me from myself when I do something stupid without reading the directions first, or making a separate backup, or whatever....

Like last night - I decided to re-configure the active partition on the hard-drive from one huge partition back into the two smaller ones it was originally. I used a well-known partitioning tool which I've used before without any problems, but last night, I did something wrong, and the computer wouldn't restart Windows afterward.

Enter Windows 7's 'Save Your Ass' features, and it gives you choices for undoing the harm done and getting back to normal again, without having to re-format the drive and re-install Windows. At last, the folks at Microsoft are anticipating guys like me who will rush into something with too little preparation and too much unjustified confidence, and then get into a big mess. Not only are they anticipating our unpreparedness, but they don't punish us for it by making us do an hour's work to recover from it - like they once did. For that, I'm grateful.

And by way of learning from it, today after I had everything on my external drive cleaned off so it can start fresh, I made a complete image of everything on my C: drive, and stored it on the external one. So the next time I get stupid, or fall asleep in the midst of something, and unconsciously press a whole mess of wrong keys, I can use that image to restore everything to mint condition again in just a few minutes.

And after that mess was all recovered from last night, I found that the attempt at dividing the single partition into two had been successful, even though it wasn't booting afterward - and that was because the partitioning program had automatically re-assigned the drive letters even as I had manually chosen those myself. So it refused to boot, because it couldn't find the drive letters I'd given it, because those were different after the partitioning program did its own thing after I'd made the choices. So next time, I won't do any choosing of drive letters, I'll leave it to the automatic program, and hopefully avoid all that. So all's well that ends well. The drive is back to two partitions, and is rebooting and starting Windows normally again. Thank You, Windows 7 !