A Good dodge
Plastic PPRuNer
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A Good dodge
Got a gig of hard disk space to spare? Here's a good safety dodge that (bizarrely) I had to use within a week of doing it. Basically it consists of making an exact copy of your \WINDOWS directory under another name.
I used XXCOPY (which is a kind of super-Xcopy [command-line 32 bit Windows program] available from http://www.xxcopy.com/index.html ) to clone my \WINDOWS folder to \WINCOPY
Syntax: XXCOPY C
WINDOWS CWINCOPY /CLONE [add /PB of you want a pretty window with a progress bar]
Plain OLD XCOPY won't do - it's too slow, chokes on your swapfile and files with bizarre attributes and is generally unsat.
If your Micro$oft Wonder ever goes Tango Uniform you can boot with the emergency disk, rename \WINDOWS to \OLDWIN and \XWINCOPY to \WINDOWS and reboot. Just remember to update your \XWINCOPY regularly and only when the system is behaving smoothly.
If you're truly paranoid (like me) store another clone on a removable hard drive and keep that in the woodshed (actually I clone the entire drive...). Just cloning CWINDOWS probably won't work properly in ME (ugh!) or eXPensive or 2000 though.
I used XXCOPY (which is a kind of super-Xcopy [command-line 32 bit Windows program] available from http://www.xxcopy.com/index.html ) to clone my \WINDOWS folder to \WINCOPY
Syntax: XXCOPY C
WINDOWS CWINCOPY /CLONE [add /PB of you want a pretty window with a progress bar]Plain OLD XCOPY won't do - it's too slow, chokes on your swapfile and files with bizarre attributes and is generally unsat.
If your Micro$oft Wonder ever goes Tango Uniform you can boot with the emergency disk, rename \WINDOWS to \OLDWIN and \XWINCOPY to \WINDOWS and reboot. Just remember to update your \XWINCOPY regularly and only when the system is behaving smoothly.
If you're truly paranoid (like me) store another clone on a removable hard drive and keep that in the woodshed (actually I clone the entire drive...). Just cloning C
WINDOWS probably won't work properly in ME (ugh!) or eXPensive or 2000 though.
Join Date: May 2002
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An excellent suggestion Mac. Can I take this one step further? If you have it, a ghost utility is another option (e.g. Norton Ghost, or similar). This is best utilised if you have a spare hard drive/partition to use for a backup. The main advantage of using a ghost utility is that it will map the boot sector/boot strap for the drive too, so if it is your C drive, you won't encounter any problems with it detecting the operating system when it comes to using your backup.
That said, Mac's suggestion is probably the best solution if you don't have a spare drive handy or you don't need to backup the entire C drive.
That said, Mac's suggestion is probably the best solution if you don't have a spare drive handy or you don't need to backup the entire C drive.
Thanks! Mac the Knife
Join Date: Jun 2000
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Thanks MtK, another good tip! And yes F-b-W, you beat me to it.
Not wishing to get into an upstaging contest, I was going to recount my troubles (and solutions) when I set about fitting a larger HDD in my Sony Caio C1VE (the half-size job). This has a USB port for a floppy but no internal CD Drive - only a single PCMCIA slot to take an external CD Drive.
The Notebook was working as well as when it came with its 12Gb HDD, WinME and lots of specialised Sony software, but the Drive had quickly proved it was too small for the amout of Digital Video I was producing.
So I got 40Gb Drive from Simply and fitted it with the help of some useful info found on the Web. Fiddly but OK if done carefully - I had to fit/remove several times because of the software installation difficulties. Used a DOS boot floppy and FDISK to partition and installed Card Services software then tried to run the CD Drive - no chance. So I couldn't rebuild using the Sony Restorer disks either.
The two rescue tools were an external caddy for the drive (fom Dabs) and Partition Magic(PM) running on a Host PC over W2K.
Tried loading the whole of a Win2K install CD onto the new HDD and installing from the HDD - no luck; don't know why, I've done it with W98SE. But I really wanted the 40Gb HDD to be a clone of the 12Gb HDD so the solution that worked was simplicity itself although requiring some costly hardware and lots of time while many Gb were transferred. Here's the process:
1. On Host PC used PM to create an unpartitioned space big enough for the Boot Partition of the 12Gb Drive. Copied over the entire Boot Partition. Never mind if the other Drives are re-lettered. Sort that later.
2. Switch HDDs in the caddy and use PM to copy over the partition to the beginning of the target disk. Allow two hours for this and remember to make this an Active partition. Polish up the partitioning and file systems to suit requirements.
3. Refit new HDD in Sony PC and it works as though nothing has changed - almost! Just two obscure and trivial differences: the Regional Settings (Time Display, Currency) had gone back to default and had to be reset in Control Panel, and closing down now is quicker and cleaner, WinME doesn't give the message "your System is Closing down" before switching off.
If you can afford the Kit and time and have the space for the transfers this is the way to go. I did not have to re-install any Applications or Data.
Not wishing to get into an upstaging contest, I was going to recount my troubles (and solutions) when I set about fitting a larger HDD in my Sony Caio C1VE (the half-size job). This has a USB port for a floppy but no internal CD Drive - only a single PCMCIA slot to take an external CD Drive.
The Notebook was working as well as when it came with its 12Gb HDD, WinME and lots of specialised Sony software, but the Drive had quickly proved it was too small for the amout of Digital Video I was producing.
So I got 40Gb Drive from Simply and fitted it with the help of some useful info found on the Web. Fiddly but OK if done carefully - I had to fit/remove several times because of the software installation difficulties. Used a DOS boot floppy and FDISK to partition and installed Card Services software then tried to run the CD Drive - no chance. So I couldn't rebuild using the Sony Restorer disks either.
The two rescue tools were an external caddy for the drive (fom Dabs) and Partition Magic(PM) running on a Host PC over W2K.
Tried loading the whole of a Win2K install CD onto the new HDD and installing from the HDD - no luck; don't know why, I've done it with W98SE. But I really wanted the 40Gb HDD to be a clone of the 12Gb HDD so the solution that worked was simplicity itself although requiring some costly hardware and lots of time while many Gb were transferred. Here's the process:
1. On Host PC used PM to create an unpartitioned space big enough for the Boot Partition of the 12Gb Drive. Copied over the entire Boot Partition. Never mind if the other Drives are re-lettered. Sort that later.
2. Switch HDDs in the caddy and use PM to copy over the partition to the beginning of the target disk. Allow two hours for this and remember to make this an Active partition. Polish up the partitioning and file systems to suit requirements.
3. Refit new HDD in Sony PC and it works as though nothing has changed - almost! Just two obscure and trivial differences: the Regional Settings (Time Display, Currency) had gone back to default and had to be reset in Control Panel, and closing down now is quicker and cleaner, WinME doesn't give the message "your System is Closing down" before switching off.
If you can afford the Kit and time and have the space for the transfers this is the way to go. I did not have to re-install any Applications or Data.
