I have a nice well running Win 98se system.
I do a complete mirror / copy to another HD as a back up on a regular basis. I can switch my HD’s at will and they both are complete systems.
I would like to move just my OS to still another HD without taking all my pictures, apps like ZoneAlarm, and Adobe, and games and just junk and little programs, map programs etc. Just like a clean in stall except keeping all the updates that this one has already.
My little program that came with a new drive gives me the option of copying the whole thing or just some files.
So, what would I copy over? Or should I delete stuff and then copy the whole drive?
I want to have just the Win 98se OS with all it’s updates but nothing else just as if I had a totally up to date CD.
You can’t just delete stuff, you would also need to uninstall your applications since there is data in the registry. And if the third hard drive is on a different computer, or the hard drive is a different make or whatever, there is the potential for it to just fail.
XP you just go to the Windows update website and it will do an auto-download of everything. Of course you have to do two or three download-reboot cycles of this. But either way for a fresh install of Windows you’re looking at four to five hours. For an image copy it could be anywhere from two to never.
And a fresh install with an immediate update to the newest patches, previous to installing everything, makes a much more stable and happy environment (with XP at least.)
Win98 is no longer supported, as far as I am aware. This is part of MS’s strategy to force you to switch from whatever you wish to use to whatever they wish to sell.
If you want to stick with 98 and your system is indeed nice and well running, then your best bet is to just uninstall/delete anything you don’t want to keep, and then cloning the disk across using either a backup, or something like Norton Ghost. Just watch out for the fact that some disks nowadays are too big for 98 to cope with in one chunk, and other weirdness related to hardware which is just to new and clever for it to understand.
Win98 updates will be available until July 11, 2006. After that, the updates won’t be available for download, but all the documents regarding Windows 98 will remain online for reference.
Just copy all the files over and then delete things one at a time until it stops working ;).
I don’t know 98 well enough to say exactly what, but on XP, there’s a WINDOWS directory inside C: that seems to include all the stuff you need. I’d copy everything over and delete the directories with personal files and executables in them. Bear in mind that you’ll still have lots of dlls (shared code that many programs use) installed and your registry will still have all the programs you installed. This may cause problems if you try to reinstall those programs (or other programs) later.
Why do you want to do this? There may be some easier way of accomplishing your goals.
Just messin round with trying to get the fastest boot time I can.
Also, as 98 is going away, a nice clean install HD that I can use for rebuilding and backup in always nice to have laying around.
I have it down to just Win 98se ( WORD and the MS office ) WinZip and Zone Alarm, a pop-up stopper, all the stuff I need to run my scanner and printer, some basic sites on IE and Firefox and a few other essential goodies…
1, 917, 234 or just under 2 GIG’s.
Would like even smaller but will fit on a little scuzzy hard drive I have ion a box that I want to mount. (How quick can I make this old set up go?)
Microsoft’s updates for 98 are a pain anyhow. This guy has put together an extremely popular unofficial ‘service pack 2’ for Windows 98 so you only have to install one thing.
I use it, and it works fine for me. I… fourth? the recommendation to re-install Win98.
I now have a hard drive with a clean 98se install all up to date and it includes the stuff I always want like
Belarc
Adobe 5.0 (love the old one)
ZoneAlarm
Irfanview
Word and stuff
FireFox
etc.
Still under 2 Gigs.
Also makes it easy for my ‘give away’ computers to those who can’t afford one.
