Windows XP Home Ed.

I'm using XP professional and the back up utility is located at: programs/accessories/system tools/back up

xp home ed. is a piece of junk I had it and went back to 98 2nd edition, with great difficulties, had to reformat disk and start over.
Why does M'soft put out junk, so the consumer can finds all the bugs and then they correct them. 98-se is still the best, if you don't like it use Opera as your browser.

To the best of my knowledge Home XP does there own "back up" each day for use with your system restore option. My best advice (I have Home) Is to go: programs/accessories/system tools/System Restore and choose the option "Create a Restore Point".... that would be they way I would do it.

Harmony

The Backup utility is not included in the default installation of Windows XP Home. You have to load it from your original CD-ROM.

So, pop your CD-ROM into the drive and go to

\VALUEADD\MSFT\NTBACKUP

Double-click the Ntbackup.msi file to start a wizard that installs the Backup utility. When the wizard is complete, click Finish.

The procedure to actually do a back-up on XP Home, is a little involved. So, I suggest you go to Microsoft.com and do a search with the search terms "backup xp home". I know there is a procedure somewhere in the Microsoft support base.

Creating a restore point, as someone else suggests, simply creates a copy of your registry files so that you can go back to a clean registry if something bad happens to the computer. This will not help you to do a backup, but is good procedure nevertheless. "Windoze" XP Home is truly not the brightest star on the software horizon.

I agree with Hywud on this one get WINDOWS Proffesional 2000 if doing spreadsheets...etc and 98se or 98mi for internet.