There's got to be a better way.... FRUSTRATED
.......................................... The other solutions I have seen here are elegant and provide more definitive protection, but for Win98 I simply used to make a directory on the hard drive c:-winbak and copy all of the windows files to it, after a fresh install. All files EXCEPT the windows swap file can easily be copied. Do this in windows explorer.
When the day comes to "restore" windows I would: 1) unplug my win98 computer from the net. 2) boot to DOS -the win98 startup cd is fine. 3) here is the hard part, I'd run the old program called Dosshell !!
You can probably find dosshell if you look hard enough. Dosshell ignores hidden file ( if option selected) and other attributes.
Best to load a mouse driver before running dosshell, but if you forget -shift+ F9 takes you to a DOS prompt where you can type mouse, provded that mouse.com is copied to directory on path. type exit to return to dosshell, without reloading the file structure that can take a while.
you can't change the type of system with a bios update. other than the case and removable drives and battery, they are very different...
4) in Dosshell , reanme windows directory Winbad ( you could use deltree to remove it, but thats slow & better to be safe -remove later. 5) in dosshell, rename winbak directory windows. 6) press F3 to terminate dosshell
7) Ctrl-Alt-del to reboot computer, windows should load. 8) if all goes well use windows explorer to delete the directory winbad. 9) you are finished the restore part, but your winbak directory is gone. So make c:-winbak and copy all windows directory to it, except the swap file, and you're done.
If this is too much, go for Ghost or TrueImage. I never had much faith in GoBack, never liked the overhead of a program running in the background.
William P.N. Smith, Because the McAfee VirusScan program that Comcast is offering for free, checks for updates every 4 hours automatically, whether you need it or not, if you are connected to the...
This method has no problem that long file names could cause if the winbak directory was on another drive.
If your computer boots from a CD you could use any of a hundred boot CDs such as Knoppix, WinPE, ultimate boot cd, etc, in place of boot floppy and Dosshell.
BTW, I hope everyone using WinXp or later uses a tiny program called erunt. This ugly named program backs up the registry and can restore it from a boot CD on the day that WinXp wont boot. The author has a full explanation of why erunt is necessary:
Download: