It only took me a few hours to recover from this would have been nightmare. Let me share with you how I did it.

Browser: I use FireFox, the best browser there ever was. There are several ways to backup your FireFox data. Here what I use:

Google sync – It’s a new tool from Google. Basically it’s meant to be used for users who use FireFox on more than one computer. It backs up your favorites, cookies, usernames & password pairs, and your history on their servers. Every time you load FireFox it reloads all that data for you.

Thumb Drive: I have copy of FireFox portable on a thumb drive that I use when I’m away from my computers. It allows me to use my friends and clients computers without missing a beat. I also have Google Sync installed within this browser.

JavaScript Password Hack: I found this little script about a year ago. It will export all your passwords for you. The only reason I use this is because Google Sync will not save any passwords used on a secure server. (https://). PS right click here and save file as to your desktop. Then open the file from your desktop.

External Hard Drive: I have a number if external hard drives. I mainly use these for movies and music. But I also have Window copy my entire user directory to one of them every night.

Network File Server: I have an Ubuntu file server on my network. I double all my backups here too. You can’t trust just one external hard drive; they do fail at some point.

As far as programs go I have a big Ziploc bag that I keep all the software that I have on cd. I don’t have to rummage around the entire house to find all those cds.

The software I need to download I have bookmarked in a tabs folder, within FireFox.

I’m sure you use different ways to protect yourself from data loss. I have listed just what I use myself. I would love to here how you do it.

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I’m going to show you how you can do this in 5 minutes, and just 4 steps. Before we start you will need to download a fresh copy of XAMPP Lite. Once downloaded, unzip the file. You do not need to install this it will run right out of the extracted directory. See if you can do this in 5 minutes. Post your results in the comment section below. Let’s get started:

Step 1 adding host name to windows

You will need to open your windows host file. Depending on your version of windows, this file will be located in different locations. Here is the list of where your host file will be:

Windows 3.1/95/98/ME:
c:\windows\hosts

Windows NT/2000/XP Pro:
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts or c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Windows XP Home:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Windows Vista:
C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts

Open the file with notepad. If your using Vista you’ll need to run notepad as administrator. Just left click on the notepad icon and click run as administrator in the drop down menu.

Now add this to the bottom of the file

127.0.0.1 wordpress
127.0.0.1 websitebaker

The number to the right is your computers default ip address. In most cases the number should be the same as I have listed here. The words are the virtual host name. In this case I am adding 2 new hostname, wordpress, for my WordPress directory, and websitebaker for my Website Baker directory.

Save the file. Make sure notepad doesn’t append .txt to the file. That’s it for step 1, see easy so far.

Step 2 Edit the httpd-vhosts.conf

Open the httpd-vhosts.conf file with notepad. You will find it in xampplite\apache\conf\extra. Copy and paste the following code at the end of the file.

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /xampplite/htdocs
ServerName localhost
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName websitebaker
DocumentRoot /xampplite/htdocs/websitebaker
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /xampplite/htdocs/websitebaker>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName wordpress
DocumentRoot /xampplite/htdocs/wordpress
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /xampplite/htdocs/wordpress>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Now scroll back up and un-comment this line:
#NameVirtualHost *:80 (toward the top)

To look like this:
NameVirtualHost *:80

Save the file and create the 2 directories (wordpress & websitebaker) in your htdocs directory.

Step 3 Start Apache and test it.

go to \xampplite directory and click on xampp-control.exe and click the start button next to apache,

Watch for errors. If apache reports no errors then give your virtual host a try http://wordpress/

I hope you had fun, please comment your experience.

Step 4 (Okay, now I can count, with a little help from Eric)

Tell us about your experience by commenting bellow, and enjoy your XAMPP server.

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But I still love Firefox

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I was excited to see the desktop, if only for a moment. I attempted to reboot again. I rebooted four times. All with the same result. So I continue trying to boot other computers, none of my attempt worked.

With all my attempts, with a live CD. My notebook seem to be the best candidate for install. So I downloaded the install CD and ran on my notebook. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when it did not work.

After reading the comments from one of my readers, I realized that this OS was not meant for the normal everyday user. Although I should note that the designers are still at a beta stage. My hope is that at some point, the software will be usable for the end user. But after reading from their website, I fear they will never finish.

The reason I say this, is because they seem to be chasing Microsoft. It looks as if though they are planning to develop a Vista version before. They have finished with XP.

After spending some time on the Internet researching and chatting, it seems the only users are those developing the software itself or those developing drivers.

I really hope that in the future, this OS will be available and usable to the general public. I wish the developers the best of luck.

As always, I welcome all comments on the subject.

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Here is a screen shot:

Check it out: ReactOS

I also noticed after a brief Firefox works, but does so very slow….

If you try it please post a comment telling of your experience.

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