Mac user needs Windows advice

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

…for two very similar situations, actually.
a) Under VirtualPC, I’ve got a nice C and D drive for running Windows95. The OS originally came preinstalled from Connectix, makers of VPC. I have of course, since then, installed a double-handful of PC programs and set up various preferences and whatnot. Well, God knows why, but Connectix gave us the version/variation on W95 in which, every bloody time you want to change a setting, Windows asks you to insert the damn Windows95 installation CD. If, to get rid of this nonsense, I reinstall Windows95 on top of the existing installation, will it preserve the necessary drivers and supporting files and settings files and so on which function the way I want them to now?

b) My girlfriend has a Compaq laptop she has come to hate; it is unstable and unreliable. My suspicion is that there’s nothing wrong with the hardware, but that the Compaqtified version of Windows98 she’s running is hopelessly full of garbage. And she says Compaq did not deign to so much as supply her with a Windows installation CD! (is that possible? why would they sell a computer without the OS installer? how could they?). Anyhow, I’ve got my hands on the installation diskettes (yeah, diskettes) for Windows NT Workstation, and have told her it would probably be a lot more stable than W98, particulary her version of W98. She is NOT a gamer; she runs AOL, Lotus SmartSuite office apps (WordPro, 123), QuicKeys for Windows macros, Netscape and Internet Explorer as alternatives to the AOL browser, a couple of genealogy software packages, and FileMaker Pro. Not much else.

We have the installer CDs for FileMaker and Lotus SmartSuite, and AOL, Netscape, and IE installers can presumably be downloaded easily enough from the web for free. Her internet connection is Verizon DSL. She has no USB. She has a PCCard modem from 3Com and we have the drivers on diskette; she uses the modem to FAX with, using the built-in Microsoft FAX printer driver.

If we install NT Workstation on top of her W98, will most of her settings and preferences be carried over into the new OS? Will Verizon DSL most likely work using her current settings and/or simply continue to work? Will AOL preserver her saved-to-disk “old mail” if it becomes necessary to reinstall? Any “gotchas” we ought to take into account before giving it a whirl?

2

I don’t have a specific answer to your Virtual PC question …however you may wish to check out Virtual PC Central. I’ve had good luck there for other issues.

3

First, Compaq does not “customize” Windows beyond some basic stuff, basically name branding (startup screen, vendor specific info, etc.) More likely is the extra software installed. Look in the Add/Remove Programs control panel and remove any software you don’t want.

You cannot install Windows “on top” of an existing install and have it work correctly. You cannot do a clean install of Windows the same way you can with Mac OS. In fact, doing so will be totally counter-productive to what you want, as all preference files will be overwritten. Generally, a Windows reinstall requires a reformat of the hard drive, which is the same as initalizing the hard drive on a Mac.

The issues you are having with VPC and the CD insertion are, sadly, a fairly standard practice with Windows systems.

As for using NT, I recommend against it. First, NT is difficult to configure, more so than 95/98. Second, all MS operating systems tend to become slower and less stable as the computer is used. Personally, I reformat and reinstall every 6 months. Although Compaq hardware does, in fact, suck, it is probably not the single cause of bad performance. Third, the old version of NT you have is extremely unlikely to operate properly with your software. Historically, NT has had not only problems with games, but software compatibility, hardware, and stability.

The OS for the laptop is probably in a “restore” CD that does little more than dump an image backup back onto the hard disk, replacing what was there previously. On preconfigured systems the files are usually copied to the hard disk so a disk is not needed for any driver installs, config changes, etc.

I think this should be moved to GQ. Is this agreed on by a mod?

4

I am fairly expert in VPC, but you’ll have to tell me what version of VPC you’re running. I suspect you’re running VPC 3 at best if you’re just running W95. I highly recommend VPC4, it has massive advantages over VPC3. But in either case, you can install from a real Windows CD onto VPC, procedures vary by which version of VPC you’re using. Contact me if you don’t find what you need on the Connectix or vpccentral.com sites.

No, your settings will not “carry over” if you install NT over W95. You’ll be lucky if you don’t have to reformat completely. I suggest you just get ahold of a real Windows CD (Win98se is my suggestion for this application) and install that. There’s nothing specific to Compaq that won’t be available through a standard Windows installer CD. But avoid NT for your friend, she doesn’t need it and it will unnecessarily complicate her life (of course, you could say that about ANY windows version…)

5

IANATechnician, but I strongly recommend downloading any and all drivers for notebook/Compaq specific stuff (PCMCIA card interface especially, doubly especially if you have a PCMCIA or USB CD-ROM drive) before reinstalling. Of course, AFAIK, these things are auto-detected upon an OS installation, but it can’t hurt to make sure, right?

6

Yeah, they do that. Why? They’re Compaq. They suck.

7

I do it every few months and it works fine. Of course thats on a PC.

Compaq does seriously screw up the windows installer. Get the drivers for ALL of the hardware. Then reformat and install windows 95 from a borrowed cd (legal because a licence came with the laptop) then install all of the drivers. Then copy the CAB files to somewhere on the C drive and tell it to look there if it ever asks for the windows CD. I did this for my Compaq desktop it it improved performance greatly.

8

Chas E., I’m currently running VPC 3, will probably upgrade to 4; the VPC “hard drive” was created originally under VPC 2.0, though.

I know I could install a new OS–whether Windows 95, Windows 98, or NT (in fact, that is exactly how I obtained my Windows NT Server VPC setup–I duplicated the hard drive files and inserted the CDROM and installed NT over 95 and have had no problems with THAT one).

But if I install W95 or W98, what’s it going to do to the plethora of files and settings placed there by Lotus, PaintShopPro, QuicKeys, etc? It would be nice if I didn’t have to reinstall every bloody piece of software after reinstalling Windows.

Hmm…I could, of course, duplicate the “hard drives” and reinstall Windows95 on ONE of the sets and then copy whatever files and registry entries I need to have on the pristine set in order to avoid that damn “please insert the Windows installation CD” dialog every time I do something as complicated as change the name of my workgroup! But in order to do that, I’d have to know which files those would happen to be. I know how to do the equivalent thing on a Mac (do a fresh install and move the files I need to a legacy System Folder) but I don’t know the PC the way I know the Mac.

Mblackwell refers to CAB files – would those be the critters I’d need to copy over?