Safe Mode Backup

My laptop (Vista Home Basic Service Pack 2) is behaving very strangely (will post more separately) and I want to take a full back up before I try to fix the problems (System Restore did not work). Sadly, the normal boot of Vista is not staying upright without freezing for long enough to complete a normal backup using EaseUS Torode or even the Windows backup software.

What is the best way of backing up in Safe Mode when neither EaseUS Torode or Windows backup work in Safe Mode.

I'm backing up the laptop partioned drive (into 2 drives) with a max capactity 160Gb, to a 1Tb Buffalo Ministation connected to the laptop with a USB cable.

Thank you in advance.

Hello and welcome to Tom's Hardware Forums.

Try Safe Mode and see how long it stays on. If it goes an hour, carry out your backup but do it by copying and pasting into the external drive. Copy everything under C:\Users{yourname} into a folder named for you then do the same to the other users.

While you're in there, check in Control Panel>Administrative Tools>>Event Viewer to try to find out what's been going on in there. The System logs might throw some light on it.