Well, it seems that Vista has managed to fix whatever it was that I fouled up a couple of months ago. A very helpful tech from Microsoft called and tried to work through the problems. He couldn't identify any particular problem so we decided that a repair install was the best way forward.

In order to do this, I had to uninstall Service Pack 1 RC, otherwise the repair wouldn't work. I'd hoped that SP1 might solve the problem, although this wasn't the case.

Now that it's working I've decided to make a proper backup before doing anything else.

The biggest disappointment I've had with Windows Backup is that it won't backup to a network share. I can't face sitting with a pile of 10 DVDs and in any case I would need to start very early in the morning, so the hundreds of of GB on my home server.

The best alternative so far seems to be DriveImageXML, a freeware backup utility that also works well with Windows XP recovery CDs such as Bart's PE Builder.

Interestingly, DriveImage XML has issues with User Access Control. I'd just started on the downward spiral of disappointment that none of my drives were listed when the following message appeared, telling me to disable UAC before making the backup.

So disable it I must, but I will certainly turn it back on after the backup has finished.