My brother-in-law is never afraid to ask a question. This week, he’s concerned that his copy of Windows XP Home Edition is missing the backup program. Where is it?
Its on your Windows XP CD.
From Windows XP Inside Out, Second Edition:
If you’re running Windows XP Home Edition, you won’t find Backup Utility on the Start menu or even in Add Or Remove Programs. It is included, though; you just need to know where to look. To install Backup Utility, you need your Windows XP Home Edition CD. Use Windows Explorer to open the Valueadd\Msft\Ntbackup folder, and then double-click Ntbackup.msi.
Mission accomplished.
Update: The Windows XP Backup program is installed by default with Windows XP Pro. Based on user surveys, Microsoft decided (incorrectly, in my opinion) that anyone using Windows XP Home Edition wouldn’t be interested in the Backup program. That’s why you have to manually install it. Thanks to Woody for asking this question in the comments.
Update 2: If you have a recovery CD instead of a “real” Windows XP Home Edition CD, you can install the Ntbackup program from a borrowed CD. If you can’t find one of those, download the installer from this site.
Update 3: If you’re looking for advice on how to actually use the backup program after it’s installed, see this article I wrote last year: Windows XP Backup Made Easy.
Ed Bott 
So there isn’t one on XP Pro?
It’s installed automatically with XP Pro.
So presumably those of us “blessed” with a recovery disk instead of the real XP CD won’t be able to install this then? Bummer.
Yep, yet another reason to hate those recovery CDs.
The good news is you can copy the files off any Windows XP CD, if you can find one to borrow. No serial number required. Also, you can download the Ntbackup program from a number of third-party sites. I’ve updated the item with one reliable link.
you are lucky you have a recovery cd. I have a recovery partition.
Read “Windows XP Backup Made Easy” but when I tried to back up the My Documents folder, I was only given Drives G, H, I and J (but not E and F on the front of the PC!)as destinations. Also, if CD-RW discs cannot be used, what discs are O.K.?
General comment. What should be the simple process of saving Word .txt files in the My Documents folder is turning into a nightmare with Nero, Windows Backitup, and even EZbackiup (the latter now uninstalled). That was not the case with the old Iomega Zip files some years ago. What exactly is going on?
Paul, if your E: and F: drives are CD or DVD drives, then no, you can’t select them. You can only back up to a local hard disk, a network share, a tape drive, a floppy drive, or read-write removable media that looks like a floppy drive, such as a Zip drive.
Someone has created a free front-end for NTBackup that makes it a bit friendlier and improves on some things.
Enhanced Windows Backup
http://www.softswift.com/prod-windows-backup-software-ntbackup.htm
Is it possible to create the ASR recovery “diskette” on something other than a diskette? Perhaps a CD-R or a flash drive, or must the BIOS recognize the device?
Does the Windows XP backup utility back up emails for outlook? I selected “Let me choose what to back up” as described here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/bott_03july14.mspx
but it the My Computer was greyed out, so I couldn’t select my documents and settings folder.
The instructions and description in the web page described above suggest that it might be backing up the email, but it’s not really clear.
i have a dell labtop.windows xp home is restore in my labtop.but i format this labtop.what i do now.
I try to back up to an external harddrive but I get an error saying the files for the recovery diskette could not be created. The operation was aborted. What??