At 10:25 AM 1/28/01 -0600, Donny Dane wrote:
>some major snipping below...
>
>First, some background - I work at a computer shop, doing alot of service
>work on home and office machines, and I'm certified Microsoft <insert
>product here(well, not ALL of them...)>, as well as alot of hardware vendor
>certs. I work on an average of 10-40 machines/week, most running win9x,
>winnt, or win2k.
>
>With ME, I've noted a few things...
>If you have a PC that came loaded with 98 SE, you are probably ok to
>upgrade.
>If you have a PC that came loaded with 95, 95a, 95b, or 98 First Edition,
>DON'T even mess with trying to upgrade. Yeah, I know microsoft says it will
>work, but you'll cause yourself more headaches than you know. If you must
>upgrade, upgrade to 98 SE, and you'll be happier.
>
>DON'T load PcAnywhere 9.x or up on ME. Hoses up the network stack, and
>causes lot's of little niggling errors that are impossible to get rid of. It
>works on some machines, but not others. If you have to use PCA, use 98SE or
>NT4.
>
>Be careful of device drivers, try not to use anything written for 95 or 98
>FE. if it's for 98SE, you're probably ok. I've seen more device drivers
>written for the first run of 95 hose up ME machines than I'd care to count.
>
>Reload, either every 6 months or 1 year, and reinstall applications. I
>know, it takes alot of time, but is it better to have a clean running system
>that you spend 8 or 10 hours on every 6 months doing maintenance, or one
>that you will be fighting crashes on every other day?
>
>With Win2k, same thing applies as above, it's just a bit easier to backup
>your stuff for reloads (docuements and settings directory is a godsend for
>this :) I haven't noted any major troubles with Win2k boxes unless driver
>support is non-existant. Worst case i've seen: some guy managed to get his
>to load iomega drivers from the original cd that was sent for win95. The
>only way to fix that box was to reload.
>
>Tips for reloading: (assumption is that you have a hard drive with a bit of
>extra space, in the range of 500mb +)
>
>copy all the files from your cd in the win9x directory (not the other root
>directories, or the subdirectories, you don't need those) to your hard
>drive, in something like c:\win98 or c:\win9x or something. Make sure you
>have a driver directory, with current drivers for all of your hardware,
>including modems, motherboard, video, sound, etc. Also, make sure you have
>a copy of the Internet Explorer Installation program for your favorite
>flavor (4.x, 5.0, 5.5) if you use that, or the installation file for
>netscape (reloading will blow IE out for sure, netscape just won't run right
>until you reinstall it). After you are sure everything is in place, follow
>the next steps:
>
>Scandisk
>Defrag
>reboot to safe mode MS-Dos Prompt (hit F8 when it says 'Starting Windows',
>you have about 2 seconds...I usually just start hitting F8 repeatedly after
>the memory count)
>Rename your windows directory: i.e. c:\>move windows win.old (just in case
>something goes wrong :)
>Go into the source directory (remember the win9x files?) c:\>cd win98
>Run setup with /is (skip the disk check, you've already done scandisk and
>defrag :) c:\win98\>setup /is
>Fill in the prompts, when it asks you what directory to install to, it will
>prompt you for Win.old, change this to Windows.
>install device drivers, apps, etc. All your documents will be where they
>were, except for email if you use Outlook Express or Outlook. You'll need
>to import those and any favorites, cookies, shortcuts, etc. from the win.old
>directory (email me if you need help with this). Once you are happy with
>the new load and have gotten everything you need out of win.old, delete the
>win.old directory, and you have a clean, reloaded machine.
>
>If you have questions or doubts, please email me (i do this at least once a
>day on various machines :)
>
>wow, what a ramble...sorry about the length :)
>
>MacGrough Mich'Rathe
>Solusek Ro Blood Tide
>32 Songs for the 4th time :)
Definitely good advice. Should save some people a lot of aggravation.
I'd recommend that if you are doing a complete rebuild of windows that if
you have been having a reoccurring problem with a specific application that
you may want to delete that application's program directory before
reinstalling it. Sometimes the file that is creating the problem is still
there and isn't overwritten with the reinstall. That's about the only real
reason I prefer to wipe out a partition is to remove any old legacy files.
I also prefer to save all of my data on a separate partition for just this
type of occasion along with a ghost image of the "c" partition in case
there were any files that I forgot to copy off.
---Windleaf