TechRepublic passport owner Kenneth B. Best submitted the topic for this week’s quiz, and we sent him a TechRepublic T-shirt. If you’d like to submit a stumper for our weekly pop quiz, please send me a note .
Everyone who submitted a solution had a chance at winning because we put all the names in a hat and selected our winner at random. Congratulations and a $25 gift certificate to Fatbrain go to TechRepublic passport owner Dan Watson, Sr.
The situation
In September 1999, we published several tips from TechRepublic readers for restoring files from backup sets under Windows 95. (You can read that article here.)

Kenneth’s dilemma is a little different. “Suppose you’ve backed up files to diskette many years ago (in fact, archived them, removing them from hard disk storage). Now you need them. Problem is, it’s FASTBACK, which isn’t sold anymore. It ran in DOS, but your copy is corrupt. Now what!?”

The challenge
Does Kenneth have a snowball’s chance in a microwave of restoring his files? If so, how?

The solution
The consensus was to send Kenneth to look for tools for repairing files from all versions of Fastback at this Symantec Web page . Even though “Ask Symantec” and telephone support services for Fastback have been discontinued, they’ve made the important files available online. When you go to that page, just choose your version of Fastback and click the Next button for a selection of free downloads.

Suppose you don’t know which version of Fastback was used to create the backup set. You can download an executable named Fbhist.exe that will tell you. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in those archives, use the online form to contact Symantec. They have a good reputation for following up customer requests for information.
If you’d like to submit a topic for our weekly pop quiz, please send us a note .