restore disk

if i use my restore disk to re-install windows 98, will i wipe out everything on my computer or will it leave everything and just install w 98 again?

If you have what I think you have then a restore disk merely replaces your Registry with a copy you had made of it earlier.

The Registry is a loonnggg list of settings for your computer that details its hardware setup and what programs are installed among other things. Depending on how old your restore disk is and how many changes you have made to your PC in the intervening time will determine how hosed your PC will be after the restore.

So, if you made your restore disk during the initial build of your PC and have since changed hardware chances are good that the restore might hose-up your PC. Any software you have installed since then may not work either. The hardware issue is the bigger problem as with the software all you may have to do is re-install the software.

If, however, your restore disk is relatively recent and nothing much has changed on your PC (no new hardware or software) you should be fine.

As always BACKUP IMPORTANT DATA before doing anything. I can’t stress this enough! Unless your PC is totally screwed do anything and everything you can to backup data files that are important to you. Including, but not limited to, e-mail and Internet Favorites. You should consider backing up the data more than once and checking to see that the backup was successful. You can always rebuild a PC if things go badly. Losing your work is the real danger.

What restore disk?? What kind of computer?

Why don’t you use the W98 cdrom to install W98??? It’ll keep the programs from before & just get new W98 files.

But you can skip all that if you just run SFC, RUN:SFC & have the W98 cd around cause it’ll make W98 all spiffy & pretty again & have no effect on the other programs.

My computer came with a restore disk instead of a Win98 disk. When I used it, it wiped everything and set the computer back to the way it was when I took it out of the box.

Jacy:

I think what you have/had isn’t a restore disk at all. Some manufacturers send a CD with an image of your harddrive at the time of shipment. Pop that baby in and it completely rewrites/rebuilds your drive.

Those are neat in that they are easy as hell to rebuild a PC. Pop in the CD, turn on the computer and return in 30 minutes and you’re good to go. Unfortunately that all falls apart if you make hardware changes to your PC (then those disks aren’t so cool and can possibly be close to useless). Also, there is always the issue of backing-up your data first as these disks rewrite thus erasing anything that was on there before (unless you have a partitioned harddrive and keep your data on the second partition)

Depends on the kind of user you are. If you’re like my parents who would never, ever make any kind of changes to their PC then no problem, you’re good to go. If you’re like me who is constantly tweaking and upgrading then those disks don’t work so well.