Suggestions for starting afresh?

[Binoculars]

The last time I formatted my hard drive it turned into a 48 hour nightmare. So when problems arose I tried reinstalling Windows over the top. I finished up with an abortion of a system where I have a Windows.000 directory,, as well as what is left over from the previous installation. A total ballsup.

I have decided the best way around this is to buy a new hard drive, install Windows (98) which I'm quite happy with, and make my old C drive a directory off the new drive, moving things as I'm happy there will be no problems.

As a neophyte, I welcome people's suggestions about the tricks to look for and the traps to avoid. There is no hurry, so I will be copying everything I currently hold to CD, but I wonder how many of those things will go looking for a Windows.000 folder instead of just slotting into my nice new hard drive.

As I say, I'm a novice here, so be gentle, but all suggestions gratefully received.

[tony draper]

You will prolly have to fdisc your new hard Drive first Binos, then just stick your windows cd in the drive and do a clean install.
I have changed hard discs quite a few times this last year, I did as you say, stick the old one in as a slave and copy anything you wish to keep across to your new c drive.
I then put the old hard drive back in as master, format it and do a clean windows install on that, keep it out side the machine as a spare.
I find the present hard discs big enough that its hardly worth haveing a slave in the machine.
I prefer loading drivers for graphics cards ect from the manufacturers discs that come with the kit when I do a clean install, then download the latest drivers and load them.
PS I still use win98 as well, never had the problems with it others seem to have.
I have tried win2k and found it fine, but I do not have the win 2kcd, so I changed back to win98.
Anyway good luck. ;)

[rickity]

Take care as copying data such as documents, spreadsheets, photos is fine but dont expect to copy applications and find them working they do need to be installed, as they do like their dll's etc in specific places along with registre entries and you need the orginal installations disks to do that. Don't forget to back up e-mails, internet favorites, and cookies otherwise you may find your self having to remember passwords or re-register on various sites (including this one)

Even back up and restore program are not particularly useful, fine if you back up and restore from the same system/disk not so good when things are changed. Even ghost dosent help copy a crap system to restore a crap system.

So as long as you don't expect to just copy everthing including applications back from your cd's you'll be fine. In fact its a bit of a waste of time and space copying the whole of your c drive onto cd's as only the data is of any use to you i.e. exe's and dll's arent, doc's, jpg's, mp3's etc are.

[Background Noise]

Formatting your hard drive should not be a problem if the disk is ok. Make sure you have a Win98 start-up floppy disk which includes an option to boot up with cd rom support. Boot from the floppy, format the c drive, and then clean install windows.

If you want to put a new HD in I would suggest you put it in in place of your current HD as the primary master and disconnect the old one. (You can leave it in situ, just disconnect its data cable). Boot from floppy, run fdisk, format the new disk and then install windows. Once its successfully up and running, re-install all the other software you need. Then re-connect the old drive as the primary slave and you can copy the data files across. Then either leave the old drive as a backup copy or format it and use it as an additional drive.

The old drive won't be a folder off the new drive, it'll be a second HDD so you'll have 2 drives probably called C and D. Your CD Rom will become E etc.

Things to note are that when it boots from floppy, it creates a RAM drive which will probably be D - so even with only one HD in, your CD Rom will be the E drive. As said above you cannot just copy programs across from the old drive, they need to be properly installed from their installation disks onto the new drive.

[Binoculars]

Thanks, people. Some useful hints there, and reinforcement of what I was afraid of, that all programs will have to be re-installed.

Took delivery of new HDD today, it's a Seagate, and apparently on the Seagate website there is a Disc Wizard downloadable file which makes the process fairly simple. I don't envisage any major problems there, despite not being intimately acquainted with the inside of my computer. I think my greatest fears are with losing data of various sorts, which is partly why I'm going the route of a new drive rather than just formatting the current one. At least I'll know the data is still somewhere, and I won't be formatting the old one until sufficient time has elapsed that I'm confident I've got everything I need on the new one.

On that subject, part of my disaster last time was losing my email address book. I copied the .wab file on to a floppy, ran it and checked that it worked, and felt confident. But when I tried to copy the file to my newly installed Outlook Express, no data! Just an empty address book! Why oh why does Microsoft have to make it so difficult to keep email data? The places they find to hide it are unbelievable.

Internet settings etc are the other things I worry about losing; as long as I have internet access everything else is survivable! I'll hold my nose and leap in the deep end when I get home tonight. If I disappear for a few days, you know I drowned. :)

P.S. Background noise, I had planned to install the new drive as the master and keep the old one there as a slave. Any particular reason why you advocate disconnecting the old one then reconnecting it as slave later?

[Agent86]

Binos,

Some other thoughts to try and future proof your clean install.

Make a boot disk which includes fdisk.exe and format.com then fdisk and format /s the C drive. This first step is because MS didn't include format on the 98 boot disk...it runs it from the CD once setup starts.

Insert the 98 boot disk and select the start with CD option.
run the command a:\xcopy32 X:\win98 c:\win98 where X is the CD drive letter

cd C:\win98 and run setup.exe from there

This saves the problem of needing the 98 cd for any hardware you install later. You can do a registry hack to change the default path of the win98 dir later if you don't want to do this two step.

Once windows is installed and BEFORE you install ANYTHING else go to control panel /system select the CD and change the drive letter to K or something lower down than the default D or E that it will be. This will allow you to add/remove hard drives at will (either via caddy or more permanently) later without screwing the CD drive letter. It also allows USB memory keys/external HD etc to fit in easily to the drive structure.

MAx

[ratsarrse]

Another tip: never use Microsoft Backup! I once used it to backup all my important stuff to a spare drive before formatting and doing a clean install. Went to restore and it wouldn't work! Piece of crap.
The Seagate Utilities mentioned earlier are quite handy - much easier than using FDisk.

[Binoculars]

"Did you get all of that, Chief?"

"Not all of it Max."

"Which part didn't you get, Chief?"

"The part after Binos, Max." :)

I have the W98 disc, Max; I'm just not sure what advantages your procedure will give me. And I didn't understand it anyway. Sorry. :( I did wonder about the naming of the drives though. I gather the system will automatically name the new drive C or D depending on whether it's master or slave, and bump everything else one letter further down. But when I remove the old hard drive later, will all drives go back to their original lettering?

Folks, listening to the sound advice given here I have decided against leaping into the deep end without really knowing what I am doing, and I will give myself a bit of time increasing my knowledge base by absorbing all your suggestions and ferreting around the internet for more. When I feel more comfortable with all aspects I'll then take the plunge.

So thank you all and please keep the suggestions coming.

[Agent86]

Binos,

Sorry about the info overload ....should have looked more closely at your initial post (re novice) :D

The first part about manually fdisk and format then copying the win98 folder is to avoid the need to have the win98 Cd when you install any new hardware or make a change to network setting or .... or .... (depends on what MS decide at the time:( )

The part about changing the drive letter for the CD I would consider V important especially as you mention adding the old hard drive later.

By default MS set the Cd to a drive letter immediately after the last hard drive. that is, if you have one HD (C) the CD becomes D,
If you have 2 HD with 2 partitions on each (C,D,E,F) the CD becomes G.

The problem comes when you install software that needs to acces the CD. If you install when the CD was D and later add a hard drive the CD will be "pushed down" to E or F (depending in the number of partitions). The software then says "can't find xxx" or "insert the xxx cd in D or some such error.

To solve this you need to future proof at the start of an install.
In Control panel the System application has a Device manager tab.

In this tab double click on the entry for your CD in the CDROM tree.
In the settings tab you can then change the drive letter in the Reserved drive letters section. (make them both the same).

you will need to reboot after to effect the changes.

Sorry about the lenth of the post but I thought I had better spell it out :D

MAx

[Binoculars]

Thanks, Max; much clearer. Gradually accumulating little bits of knowledge and the big picture is becoming slightly less fuzzy.

Don't know about xcopy32 though; is that a standard DOS command and would a simple copy command perform the same job?

[ratsarrse]

xcopy copies everything - all the subdirectories too. If you just used copy it would only copy the files at the top level and ignore all the directories underneath. Hope that makes sense!

[Background Noise]

Sorry, late reply. The reason I've disconnected the old drive in the past when fresh installing windows is so that windows doesn't see another copy anywhere when you install anew. That way it can only be a new clean install and not an upgrade or dual boot etc.

[Binoculars]

Well, here I am again 8 months later and running into problems again. I eventually copied win 98 files on to the C drive as advised and yes, it's wonderful not having to insert the Windows CD every time. I even wrote myself a little check list in a Word doc of what to do when HDD format time came around.

Tonight I formatted the hard drive of my daughter's computer prior to selling it, and do you think I could get those Win98 files to copy to C drive? Baaahhh!!!

My check list said after formatting, make new directory c:win98se, which I did. It then said E: copy Win98*.* C:win98SE.

Up you, said the computer, can't find any such files. Que? said I. Give me a DIR of the contents of the E drive please. Certainly, master, it said, and spat forth about ten directories. Hmm, thought I, directories not files. OK, there is a directory called Win98; perhaps if I copied all its files to C:win98se, that will do? So I did. And it didn't. I still keep getting asked for the Win98 CD to be put in at every possible opportunity.

I am now, as I type this, in the process of doing a drag and drop of every file in the Windows98 CD into c: Win98se. Since it currently shows about an hour to go, I shall ask the question here... will this work or is it a waste of time? Is there some reason why it has to be done before installing Windows?

This is all grist to the mill and I'm quite happy to go through the whole exercise again if necessary, since I haven't installed anything except Windows and a few drivers. Looking back through this thread now, maybe it was the xcopy command that Agent86 recommended that I didn't use that made the difference?

*sigh*

All suggestions gratefully received.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Binoculars,

If you copy the files xcopy32.exe and xcopy32.mod to a floppy you can assess it to make the copy of all files and subdirectories for you.

With the A Promt type this:

a:\xcopy32 d:\*.* c:\Win98SE\*.* /s

The /s means all subdirectories.

It will really speed up the process for you. If you would rather just install from the CD-ROM and transfer the files over later, you can do that and just change the location of the Win98SE Cabs in the Registry. It is a very simple hack.

Take Care,

Richard

[Binoculars]

Back again. Richard, re your last post, where do I copy those files from? The xcopy ones that is; are they on the W98 boot disk?

Cheers

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Binoculars,

The files you are copying are all the files on the Win98 CD-ROM. Using xcopy32 lets you copy all directories and every file in each directory in one command.

Take Care,

Richard

[Mac the Knife]

One reason for removing the first original HDD while you partition the new one is that FDISK, if it sees an active partition, won't let you make any other partion active and doesn't provide any method (short of deleting the partition) to deactivate an active partition. [Ranish Partition Manager (free) will let you deactivate an active partition]

You tell the BIOS which partition to boot from and so it actually doesn't matter if you have two drives both with an active partition.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Binoculars,

Sorry, I had missed your reply. The files for fdisk, format, and xcopy32 are all located in the c:\windows\command directory of any Win9x machine.

Take Care,

Richard