Trying system changes safely - Useful information

7 Useful information

7.5 Trying system changes safely

In this section

What is Try&Decide ... 144 Starting the Try mode ... 146 Stopping the Try mode ... 146 Try&Decide options and notifications ... 147 Try&Decide: typical use cases ... 148

7.5.1 What is Try&Decide

The Try&Decide feature allows you to create a secure, controlled temporary workspace on your computer without requiring you to install special virtualization software. You can perform various system operations without worrying that you might damage your operating system, programs or data.

If you make virtual changes that you want to keep, you may apply them to your original system.

Among the operations you may attempt with this feature is to open mail attachments from unknown senders or visit websites that might contain potentially troublesome content.

For example, if you visit a website or open an email attachment that puts a virus on your temporary duplicate, you can simply destroy the duplicate and no harm will be done – the virus will not appear on your machine.

It is important to remember that if you download e-mail from a POP mail server, create new files or edit existing documents while in the Try mode and then decide to discard your changes, those files, document changes, and mail will no longer exist. If you use POP email, make sure to change the settings in your e-mail to leave your mail on the server before you activate the Try mode. This way, you can always retrieve your email again.

Similarly, save new files and/or edited documents to a drive not protected by Try&Decide.

After starting the Try mode you can safely install any system updates, drivers and applications without worrying about what might happen to your system. If anything goes wrong, you can simply discard the changes made in the Try mode.

One of the best features of Try&Decide is that it isolates your "real" operating system from changes to the temporary operating system duplicate made by updates. Because of this, you can safely install system updates when they appear. When Windows Update informs you that updates for the system and Microsoft applications are ready for installation, turn on the Try&Decide and then proceed to

install the updates. If you encounter any sort of problem, discard the changes and leave your real operating system and applications untouched.

You can leave the Try&Decide turned on as long as you like, because this mode "survives" across reboots of your operating system.

When your computer reboots for whatever reason while working in the Try mode, before booting of the operating system starts, you will be shown a dialog offering you two choices – stop the mode and discard changes or continue working in the mode. This will allow you to discard the changes that have resulted in a system crash. On the other hand, if you reboot, for example, after installing an application, you can continue working in the Try mode after starting Windows.

When you decide to turn the mode off, click the Try&Decide icon. The program will show a dialog where you should decide what to do with the changes to your system made in the Try mode - apply or discard.

Choosing Apply changes will allow you to keep the changes made to the system, and choosing Discard changes will return your system to the state it was in before turning on the Try&Decide.

Choosing Apply changes with reboot will speed up applying the changes.

Limitations in using Try&Decide

If you use Windows Vista or Windows 7, please, be aware that in the Try mode the program may use free disk space quite intensively, even when your computer is idle. This is due to housekeeping activities such as indexing that run in the background.

Please note that while working in the Try mode you will experience slowing down of the system performance. Furthermore, the process of applying changes may take a long time, especially if you leave the Try mode turned on days on end.

Please be aware that Try&Decide cannot track changes in disk partitions, so you will be unable to use the Try mode for virtual operations with partitions such as resizing partitions or changing their layout. In addition, you must not use the Try&Decide and disk defragmentation or disk error checking utilities at the same time, because this can irreparably corrupt the file system, as well as make the system disk unbootable.

When the Try mode is started, you won't be able to use the previously activated Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. Rebooting the computer in the Try mode will allow you to use Acronis Startup Recovery Manager again.

Try&Decide and Nonstop Backup cannot work simultaneously. Starting the Try mode suspends Nonstop Backup. Nonstop Backup will resume after you stop the Try mode.

7.5.2 Starting the Try mode

To start the Try mode:

 Click Try&Decide on the Tools and utilities tab.

 Set up the Try&Decide options:

 Protected partitions (p. 147)

 Storage for virtual changes (p. 147)

 Alert settings (p. 147)

 Start the Try mode by clicking the Try & Decide icon. The program starts tracking all changes made to the OS and files and temporarily stores all the changes on the selected disk.

Every "soft" reboot of your computer while in the Try mode will result in adding up to 500 MB of Try&Decide's housekeeping data into the storage selected for storing virtual changes. This data will be added even if the protected partition has not changed between reboots.

Having performed all the changes you wanted to try, click the Try & Decide icon again to turn off the Try mode. The program will ask if you want to apply or to discard the changes.

Acronis True Image Home 2012 will track changes until the disk space in the location selected for storing virtual changes remains sufficient for applying the changes if you choose to apply them. Then the program will alert you that the time has come to make a decision on whether to apply or discard the changes made so far. If you choose to not heed the alert message, the program will automatically restart the system when the disk is full, discarding the changes in the process of rebooting. At that point, all changes will be lost.

7.5.3 Stopping the Try mode

When you decide to turn the mode off, click the Try & Decide icon in the Try & Decide window.

Select Apply changes if you want to keep the changes made to the system.

Select Apply changes with reboot if you want to speed up the applying process. When you click the button, Try&Decide restarts your computer and applies the changes during the reboot.

Select Discard changes if you want to return your system to the state it was in prior to turning on the Try mode.

If you have chosen Discard Changes and rebooted the computer with multiple operating systems installed, you won’t be able to boot other operating systems except the one used for working in the Try mode. A second reboot will recover the original MBR and make other operating systems bootable.

7.5.4 Try&Decide options and notifications

To view or edit the default options of the Try&Decide feature, select the Tools and Utilities tab and then click Try&Decide. The options and notifications will be displayed in the corresponding areas of the Try & Decide window.

You can change the following Try&Decide options and notifications:

 Protected partitions: specify the partitions you want to protect from unauthorized changes during a Try&Decide session. By default, Try&Decide protects the system partition (Disk C), though you may add other partitions or disks in your system.

 Storage for virtual changes: specify where Try&Decide will store information about virtual changes to your system. By default, Try&Decide saves the information to a free space on Disk C.

You can also choose as such place Acronis Secure Zone or another logical disk or hard drive.

When choosing to protect more than one partition, you cannot select one of the partitions to be protected to store virtual changes. In addition, you cannot select an external hard disk drive.

 Notifications – specify whether Try&Decide should alert you when it uses up all the space allotted for saving virtual changes and after a specified time period has passed. By default all notifications are On. To change the default settings, click Change alert settings....

Note, that after configuring the settings, you will always be able to recover their default values. To do so, click the Reset settings to default button.

7.5.4.1 Protected partitions

Specify the partition or partitions you want to protect from unauthorized changes during a

Try&Decide session. By default, Try&Decide protects Disk C, though you may choose to protect any other partition(s) in your system.

To select a partition:

 Check the corresponding partition box. To select the entire disk, you must select all its partitions.

 Click OK.

7.5.4.2 Storage for virtual changes

Specify the partition you want to use as a storage for virtual changes that will appear during a Try&Decide session. By default, Try&Decide saves the information to a free space on Disk C. You can also choose as such place Acronis Secure Zone or another logical disk or hard drive.

When choosing to protect more than one partition, you cannot select one of the partitions to be protected to store virtual changes. In addition, you cannot select an external hard disk drive.

To select a partition:

 Click on the partition you want to store virtual changes on

 Click OK

7.5.4.3 Alert settings

Specify whether Try&Decide should alert you when it uses up all the space allotted for saving virtual changes and after a specified time period has elapsed. By default the Alert is On.

The following options are available:

 On free disk space remaining - using this option, the program automatically checks the amount of free space left on the disk used by Try&Decide with values that you specify. If the amount of free space becomes less than the specified value, the program displays a notification message.

 On time elapsed since Try&Decide started - using this option, the program will notify you if Try&Decide has been working for longer than the period of time you specified.

Having specified the alert settings, click OK.

7.5.5 Try&Decide: typical use cases

The Try&Decide feature can help you in various circumstances, for example:

Software testing

There are known cases when installation of antivirus software cripples functionality of some

applications or they may even refuse to launch after antivirus installation. The Try&Decide utility can help you to avoid such a problem. You may proceed as follows:

 Download a trial version of the antivirus software from the Web site of the vendor whose product you wish to try.

 Turn on the Try mode.

 Install the antivirus software.

 Try to work with the applications installed on your computer performing your usual tasks.

 If everything works without any snags, you can be reasonably sure that there will be no incompatibility problems and can buy the antivirus software.

 If you encounter any problems, discard the changes in your system caused by installing the antivirus and try antivirus software from another vendor. The new attempt might turn out to be successful.

File recovery

You have accidentally deleted some files and then emptied the Recycle Bin. Then you have remembered that the deleted files contained important data and now you are going to try to undelete them using the appropriate software. However, sometimes you may do something wrong while trying to recover deleted files, making things worse than before trying to recover them. So you can proceed as follows:

 Turn on the Try mode.

 Launch the file undelete utility.

 After the utility scans your disk in search of the deleted file or folder entries, it will present you the deleted entries it has found (if any) and offer you the opportunity to save whatever it can recover. There is always a chance that you might pick the wrong file and while recovering it the utility may overwrite the very file you are trying to recover. If not for the Try&Decide, this error would be fatal and the file would be lost irretrievably.

 But now you can just discard the changes made in the Try mode and make one more attempt to recover the files after turning on the Try mode again. Such attempts may be repeated until you are sure that you have done your best in trying to recover the files.

Software uninstalling

It is well known that the "Add or Remove Programs" component of the Windows Control Panel cannot give a complete guarantee of cleanly uninstalling applications. This is because most

applications do not provide enough information for it to be able to uninstall them without a trace. So almost every time you install a trial program and then remove it, you have some garbage left on your computer and after a while Windows may get slower. Even use of special uninstaller utilities cannot guarantee complete uninstallation. The Try&Decide feature, however, will ensure complete and perfect uninstallation of any software quickly and easily. Here's how:

 Turn on the Try mode.

 Install the software application you want to evaluate.

 Try using the application.

 When you want to uninstall it, just discard all the changes made to your computer in the Try mode.

This may come in handy not only for those who, for example, like to play a lot of games but for professional software testers as well – to use on their testing machines.

Web privacy

Suppose you do not want anybody to know, which Web sites you have visited or which pages you have opened - we all have the right to privacy. But the problem is that to make your Web surfing more comfortable and fast, the system stores this information and much more: cookies you have received, search engine queries you have made, URLs you have typed, etc. in special hidden files. And such information is not deleted completely when you clear your temporary Internet files, delete cookies, clear history of the recently opened Web pages using the browser's tools. So snoopers may be able to view the information using special software. Well, there are third-party programs that can wipe all your Internet activity tracks, but most of them will cost you money and time required for learning to use them. Now you have a much easier way – to use the Try&Decide feature.

Just make a couple of clicks to turn on the Try mode before launching your Internet browser. When you turn on the Try mode, the program creates a virtual disk. While the Try mode works, all changes to your system including those made by the system itself will be saved on this virtual disk. So you can surf the Web as you please. After you have finished using the browser, make a couple more clicks to discard the changes accumulated in the system in the Try mode and the system will be rebooted and reverted exactly to the state it was in prior to turning on the Try mode (including all those hidden files).

In document Update 2. User's Guide (Page 143-149)