foolios

I was wondering with all the things that are required for these jobs, certs, cis degrees, etc. What should you really know to work on windows pc's? It seems like there is some kind of hidden language that is needed to be understood just to work with them, or geeks at the computer repair shops act like it. Are there special tools inside of windows that you won't know about unless you are educated about them? What is it really? Is it just a method? Is it a special toolkit? I have looked for books that teach computer repair but they don't really seem to specify what one should really know about the O.S. And I can't get my hands on an official MSCE book without taking a course at a technology center, paying out a few grand just to look at it's pages. What gives, can someone enlighten me as to what that's all about? What do these certified engineers know that we don't? What's inside the O.S. that is so mysterious? Thanks in advance.

I've seen where you can give these rights to system recovery when you can get into windows and pre-install system recovery. But I was wondering about when you can't get into windows to do that. What if you don't know the account or password on the system but need to use system restore?

From what I've been told USB devices can be used to help Vista better manage memory and speed up access via rerouting data from a HDD to USB memory. I am wondering if the Windows Ready Boost is somehow interfering with your boot up during Vista start up. Could you check to see if it's disabled just to be sure that Vista isn't trying to use this USB external drive as a cache area? Maybe Vista is having difficulties determining whether the USB device is a memory device or a HDD. Good Luck