Cleaning up W98SE

[rb56]

Hi, I want to do a clean load on W98SE (OEM). Could some one run through the steps that I need to take? Is it possible to save some of the information that I have IE favorites and updates. W98SE updates etc.

Then I would also like to partition the drive to hold W98SE and Linux, with the OS programs in a seperate partitions. I'm thinking that this will let me reload the OS easier, am I wrong? What would you recomend for the partition sizes, I have a 8.5g drive? Also will I need a special program to do this?

Any thing else that I am missing in this process?

Thanks for the help

 

[rb56]

ideas anyone??

 

[InTheClouds]

Ok, You want to reinstall win98se and save some stuff. Easy, first save everything you dont want hosed to an external media such as a cd or something. If you do not have a cd burner you may be out of luck. You can reload your os from a win98se upgrade disk if you have one and all you data will be saved. In this situation though you would need a software tool to partition your drive such as Partion Magic.

On the other hand, if you can live with loosing all your data you can simply boot from a win98 boot disk and at the command line type: fdisk. This will allow you to break your hdd into two partions. It is pretty straight forward how to do this. Just follow the directions. After you have set up your partions, select the partion you want to have win98se on and format it by typing: "format c: /s" at the command line. Be sure to add the /s so the system files will be copied. After that is done just install win98se there.

Once you have win98se up and running install linux on the other partion. Not sure what distro you are using but i am familiar with redhat and mandrake and you can just boot from the cd and go from there.

Hope this was helpful.

 

[rb56]

Thanks for the info, how would you partition the size of the drive? How much for 98SE? Linux? By loading OSs on a seperate partition it should be easier to reload when nessary correct?

Thanks again

 

[DAM]

what do you mean by reloading???


having two OS's just means that you have two "different" computers in one. it will not make your machine run faster or anything like that. some ppl need linux for networking stuff, and win98se for gaming (or any other reasons)



a linux installation can be as small as .5 gigs, however you probably will not be able to run any type of GUI with it just command prompth. the smalles installation ive done was on a 1.2 gig. as for how much does win98 need, i would give it like 2-3 gigs for appz, gamez, docz, etcz etcz.





dam()

 

[rb56]

By reload I mean a clean install. Wiping the disk clean and starting over. It seems that after a time W98 starts to have more and more problems. What I would like to do is set up a situation by where I can when I need to, reinstall the OS without losing all my other programs and files. That's why I was asking for partition size etc.

I have saved all files etc. that I want to keep to a CD ROM disk. So I can do what ever I need to.

As I am new to this type of project any and all suggestions are appeciated. What makes this a painless as possible for those of you that do it all the time????

 

[jkdude]

this is what i do when i want to re-install win95 or win98 on machines without re-formatting:

make a directory on your computer called BACKUP or something like that. Put all the files you want to save in that directory and other sub-directories. Then delete every other directory that is in your C drive. Now you should go on and reinstall win98, and once that is all done, reload and/or copy or move the files back to where they should be (i.e. Favorites back into the C:\Windows\Favorites directory which is also c:\windows\favori~1 under the dos-prompt)

and that should do it for you. Remember to make a Boot-disk before hand, so once you delete all your files and keep your C:\BACKUP, you can just install from there.

Also, i almost always copy the Win95 or 98 CAB files onto the hard-drive and install from there since i don't want to install off of the CD (it's a bit faster that way too!)

good luck, as i hope what i wrote works for you

-Joseph

 

[rb56]

Thanks to all for the information.