dumbluck,
quote:
1.) can i reinstall win95 under other programs w/out backups (ie will it erase all my email and folders in IE 5.5, all my .wps files, etc.)
Without backups, I'm afraid that you're probably in trouble. I don't know about IE (spawn of Satan!
), but if you back up your .wps and other data files, then restore them after reinstalling everything, they should be OK.
quote:
2.) I have my win95 disk and reg. #, but can't find my win95 documentation. How do I go about actually reinstalling it???
First, back up everything you want to keep onto another drive. Then format your Windows drive by booting off your startup floppy (go to Start/Help and enter "boot" under Index for how to make one) and using the Format command ("format C:" [Enter]). Once the drive is formatted, go to your CD-ROM drive from DOS (type the drive letter, like "D:" followed by [Enter]) and start Windows setup ("setup" [Enter]).
Sometimes, reformatting and reinstalling Windows is indeed the best way to fix problems (I've done it twice when all else failed). Sadly, reinstalling Windows with a typical setup pretty much nukes your applications and you need to reinstall them, too. They're still there, but the registry doesn't know about them, so they almost always need reinstalling. I'd like to have a talk with the Microsoft microbrain who decided that putting all the info needed by apps into one big file that gets overwritten by a Windows reinstall was better than having it in multiple .INIs like Windows 3 used
. But, I digress...
Knowing this, it's possible to prepare ahead of time. Here's how my system is currently set up: I've partitioned my main drive into three sections (via the DOS FDisk command). C: is 1 gigabyte, which holds nothing but Windows itself. E: is 5 gigs, holding essential applications (programs I use daily) and all my data files. F: is the rest of the space, holding non-essential apps (games, mostly). D: is my old drive, for backups, which also has Windows (and PKZip) installed on it so I can boot off of it. This info won't help you now, but it should help you in the future if you ever need to reinstall Windows again.
When I set this up, the first thing I did was install Windows on C: and configure it the way I like. I then zipped it up on D: (using PKZip, but WinZip would probably do fine). Next, I installed my core applications on E: and zipped up the Windows drive again. Lastly, I installed non-essential apps on F: (I didn't zip them, but did set them up to store all their data on E).
So, now if I need to go back to a "virgin" Version of Windows, I can just unzip the Version I zipped after setting up my core apps (the C:-only, "pure virgin" zip is a fallback, just in case). That way, I have Netscape, my primary document editor, and other essentials already configured, so Windows knows how to find them on E:.
This also makes it easy for me to back up E: (with my core apps and all my data) on to D: just in case my main hard drive dies. I also back up C: periodically and before I do anything major to Windows (like a DirectX upgrade or installing software that I suspect might cause problems). That way, if Windows ever gets messed up, I can easily return to a working Version. The periodic backups also mean that I can fall back to the way it was days or weeks ago. I swap my drives in BIOS, boot off of D: (now called C) format my C: partition (now called D), and unzip a recent C: backup there. When I swap the drives back, I'm booting into a working Version of Windows. (supposedly Windows 2000 can do something like this on its own, but I've also read that it has other problems, so I'm steering clear of it for now and using a method that I know works for me.) I then only have to reinstall programs added since the Last backup. I keep a couple of previous backups as well, so that I have fall-back positions available in case something subtle in Windows got screwed up in the past.
Hope this helps,
Wendell