My Win98 SE is messed up, please help

[Roots]

I am trying to get my Dell computer back on its feet. I bought it in May 2000, its a PIII 800Mhz with 256MB RAM (in case anyone was wondering). I haven't been very nice to it (installing too much useless crap, and unproperly uninstalling the useless crap), and I think its really starting to hate me now. I need a clean start, but I DO NOT want to format it. I have a lot of valuable files and junk on that 40GB HDD and it will be too hard to back all of that up, and reinstall everything. What can I do to clean up my system without turning it upside down and shaking it out?

The problems I am currently running in to are mostly freezing (When deleting a file in Windows Explorer, it freezes for a good minute or two then bounces back to life). The stability is very bad; I have to restart every two hours it seems. Other than that though things seem to be ok, my hard drive is just a mess so I'm trying to clean that up and free every MB I can. Thanks for any advice.

 

[Bleep]

First do a defrag, then a scandisk, empty all your temp files. make sure there is nothing running during the defrag or it will never get done.
Do you have a full 98 se disk or is it just a restore disk? Dont get in a hurry and take things in logical order
If you value your stuff on your hard drive why would it take to long to back everything up? I think that your impatience is going to hurt you in the long run, slow down a little.

Bleep

 

[Doomer]

If your stuff is important to you then find a way to back it up. If your HD dies then an unstable Win 98 install will be a mute point. You'll be crying over your lost data. 🙁

 

[Roots]

I have an update disk. My computer came with Win95 and I updated it to 98SE (I think). I'm just hesitant about reinstalling everything because I don't have all the original discs and software and stuff since it is not a home-built PC. I have a Zip 250 drive, but I don't have the drivers for it or any disc so I'm afraid that after formatting I won't be able to get the zip drive working, and then all of my backup data will still be on the discs and I won't be able to get it back. I know that probably isn't going to be the case, but I'm just very very frightened to try and reinstall an OS on an old computer. I could probably get an edition of ME or 2000 for $5 🙂D), but then I'm afraid of it not working with my system. Dell likes to scare the crap out of me by sending out a notice that "recommends not upgrading your OS above Win98SE".

Am I just misinformed and dilusional, or do you think I can actually get everything back up and running without having all the original discs? If my network card doesn't have the right drivers for it, then I'm screwed because I won't be able to get online and get new drivers. I'm just scared.....very cold and scared :frown:

 

[brianp34]

Finding the drivers for your hardware won't be a problem at all as long as you have internet access. Dell lists the drivers for their hardware on their site, the ZIP drive drivers should be readily available, and anything else you have can almost certainly be found by searching around a bit. Whatever you do, back up your important data before you do anything else.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

I have a Zip 250 drive

Internal or external? Internal won't need drivers, And external drivers can be found Here @ Iomega

I need a clean start, but I DO NOT want to format it.

You want a clean start, You will be formatting. You can also re-install Win98 over itself without re-formatting wich should fix some things, But there will still be a bit of old junk floating around old files and the registry.

If my network card doesn't have the right drivers for it, then I'm screwed because I won't be able to get online and get new drivers.

That is why you get all the drivers you need before you reformat. Find the make and model of your NIC, go to thier site, get drivers, put them on disk. You should really look into a CD burner for backing up your stuff. Way more convienent than floppy's or ZIP's and you know that at least your CD drive will be working when you do a fresh install.

 

[Roots]

Bleh, I can't even find my zip discs now, and I have a bunch (+2GB) of music videos and music (1GB) I want to save. I guess I could always transfer my files to a friends HDD and let him hold on to them for me while I re-format. I just haven't had good formatting experiences in the past, so I guess that's why I'm so afraid. And I don't like CD-burners, I hate keeping a bunch of loose CDs around, and I don't burn music. I guess I'm just going to have to suck it up. Thanks for the advice.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

And I don't like CD-burners, I hate keeping a bunch of loose CDs around

then get a DVD burner..

 

[Jolt2]

If you do not want to back up on a CD-RW, then buy another hard drive to backup on to. I used to backup to CD's but it took a while to do because of waiting for a CD to fill and changing to next CD to burn. Then having backup CD sets around and trying to keep them in order. Now I have a spare hard drive and put it in a removable hard drive tray. When I want to backup my system, I just slide the hard drive tray in my computer, bootup into Drive Image, and backup my system to the drive in the tray. I can turn it on and walk away, come back later and it is all backed up. Power down, remove the hard drive tray with the backup on it, and put it in a save location.....done.

Hard drives have come down in price if you look around for after rebate deals. You could buy a bigger hard drive and put that into your computer. Use the hard drive you took out for backups. This is not going to help you now except you can dump your music files on the backup drive for keeping while you format and install your system. You can take out the hard drive you have in there now and install a new one, then transfer the files back to the new drive. If you mess up installing Windows on the new drive, you still have the old drive with everything on it. I would still get a CD-RW though for burning driver files and Windows update files so that you do not have to download them again, you will have them on hand.