How can I back everything from Netbook to a USB Hard Drive

Hello CE Geeks,

I am very new to Windows CE, a greener than green new chum, but what I want to do is to make a mirror image of my new netbook sofware (which has a 7 inch screen) on a USB hard drive just in case I do the wrong thing and delete a file I shouldn't have before it all stops working and is there a program avaliable to access a dead notebook?

6 Questions

1 My Desktop Icon already playing up, its changed into a white icon. (I don't know what I have done with it)
It's asking me to Run the application first which creates Desktop.ini

2 I have connected a IDE Hard Drive to a USB interface cable and IDE socket plug, I want to make a mirror backup image of everything on the netbook.
The Hard Drive is through a USB IDE dongle, but it dosent appear as a Hard drive Icon on the desktop, instead it only appears as a USB device, this I understand, but what is the program to use with Windows CE to make a mirror image?
I cannot find a simple copy thingie to copy a file.

3 Has anyone made a database where we could go to have a look at any special addons that could be downloaded for the Windows CE 6

4 How can I change the colour of the mouse pointer to say RED

5 Whats the procedure to get a file or software into or out the notebook to the USB device in the first place?

Theres only 3 USB sockets a Wifire thingie and a LAN socket, I am used to having a Floppy drive, and a CD Rom drive to put software into my main computer.

I'm having trouble getting my 60 year old head around all this new technology.

Can anyone help please?

First of all, there's only one CE Geek (and that's already one too many ).

Many of these Windows CE 5 and 6 netbooks don't recognize mass storage devices (hard drives, thumb drives, etc) plugged into their USB ports. Some netbooks do, so we'd need to know which name the device goes under.

As for getting a dead unit working again, the normal procedure with these units is to reflash the OS. This is done by placing an SD card with the ROM image files in the SD slot and then powering the device on. The device will automatically detect the files and run them. However, again we'd need to know which netbook model this one is to determine if a flashable ROM image is available.

I'm assuming you have one of the generic Chinese minibooks.

1. There shouldn't be a "desktop" icon. If it's asking you about desktop.ini, you've probably changed a setting to display system or hidden files. Desktop.ini is a hidden file that where system stores the display for a folder; you shouldn't need to mess with it. But yes, it will be a plain white icon.

2. The hard drive won't appear as an icon on the desktop, but it should be visible as "usb drive" in windows explorer or "my device" (the equivalent of "my computer" in windows XP). To copy files to the usb drive, copy/paste or drag and drop just like in other versions of windows. Total Commander is a must-have add-on for CE; it's kind of a two pane windows explorer which lets you easily copy files from one folder to another. I don't know of any total backup utility, but the best approach is to install all programs, and save all data files, to the built in flash drive or SDMMC card which doesn't get wiped after a reset,


3. Search the forums for user RTFM's programs zipfile.

4. I don't know if that's possible; I doubt it. CE doesn't have anywhere near the customization options that desktop windows has.

5. See #2 above.

As for fixing a dead netbook, these things are hard to kill. All the built in software is stored in ROM and reverts back to the original configuration (except for registry settings and the contents of the flash drive) after a reset.

ok i have i sort of similar question only more newbie i have a 1tb external hard drive that has... well my life on it and i hooked it up to my new generic chinese random netbook #87 and it doesn't even show up under the my computer section, i've also hooked my cellphone up to it and that does show up is there any way to get my external hard drive to work or is it not possible.

If the external drive is formatted with the NTFS file system then CE won't be able to read it. FAT32 is OK.

i have also purchased it but my USB is not working there . how to work with usb .

What?