V1r,
I was in that position - Win95 and did not have an upgrade to Win98, only the full version. I saved all my data, formatted the hard drive and then took the opportunity to set things up to minimise pain at a later date should reformatting and reinstallation be necessary.
If your hard disk is big enough, think about partitioning it into a number of logical drives, or if you have a desktop PC with more than one physical drive the following will work:-
You can partition a hard disk into as many logical drives as you want. Your one C drive could be partitioned into C, D, E and F, etc. Or you can use different physical drives to the same effect.
I like to keep C for ONLY the Windows system.
I install all my apps into D.
I use E for all the data files that my apps generate. If I want to back up all my data, I just back up the E drive - easy.
I use F for saving all my downloaded software and upgrades and nothing else. This includes any saveable stuff from the Windows update site.
The benefit of this strategy is that if it all goes pear shaped:-
1) Back up the E drive to retain data.
2) Format C. (Nothing lost because it contains ONLY Windows, no data.
3) Reinstall windows to C
4) Reinstall apps (from CD, floppies, etc)to D. Reinstall downloaded programs and updates to apps from F.
5) Restore data to E if necessary.
Its a pain, nothing can stop that, and it takes ages, but it's orderly and nothing is lost.
I have three physical drives, but you can do it with any combination of physical drives and logical drives in partitions. If you have one big 30gig drive formerly known as C, you can easily partition that into c, d, e, f, etc. Even if they're all on the one big drive, if you have to format C the others on different partitions will be ok and untouched. Of course, if the drive itself dies, you've lost everything. That's why I use 3 physical drives. I don't use tape for backups, but I do make sure any backups are on a different physical drive to the original data.
I have found that using the above system, 2 or 3 Gig for a C drive is sufficient for Windows 98 and its virtual memory. The other drives you can size to suit yourself.
Hope this is of use - you don't have to do it exactly this way, but the principle is sound, I think - well, it works for me. It's a strategy I developed the hard way
AA
[ 25 August 2001: Message edited by: Ausatco ]