W98 Restore Disk and Installation Procedures Back up any files that you want to keep regardless of whether or not you are planning on formatting the drive and starting clean. Files to consider keeping include word processing documents, address books, email, bookmarks, favorites, financial records, lottery numbers, custom cursors or icons and so on. Shareware and freeware programs that were downloaded need to be saved in their original format (.exe or .zip) as backing up an installed program may miss .dlls or registry entries. Save whatever data you think you might need. If floppy disks are all you have for backing up, you may have files that are too large for them and you might need a file splitter. Here's an excellent one that's easy to use: File Shredder, http://www.kazusoft.pair.com/software/shredder/index.htm Saving OE5 Newsgroup Data and Email. Copy the Outlook Express folder that contains the .dbx files. Locate the Address Book folder and copy it. Finally, export these four registry keys: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Account Manager HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\WAB\WAB4\Wab File Name To restore the email and newsgroups once OE is installed, copy the backed up Outlook Express and the Address Book folders to the same locations where they were previously located. Open the registry editor and delete the registry keys listed above. Then merge the four saved keys into the registry. Saving OE4 Newsgroup Data and Email. The information is covered in these KB Articles: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q188/8/54.asp http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q188/0/93.asp http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q193/6/11.asp You may want to consider downloading up-to-date drivers for your hardware and as a minimum, round up any disks that you have that contain drivers for your equipment. You will need a restore floppy disk--see details below. When you are ready to install the system, follow the directions below. If you are installing to a clean hard drive with an Upgrade CD, during the installation process, you will be asked to insert a prior operating system installation disk(s) to verify that you have a prior Windows system. Once this is done, the installation will proceed. When it is complete, check the Control Panel, System, Device Manager to see if hardware items were not detected or detected improperly so you can change out the drivers. The first couple of times you do a fresh installation can be kind of scary so you may want to have someone present who has done it before if possible. Have a pen and paper available so that if you run into problems, you can make notes of what happened, when it happened in the installation process and copy down exactly any error messages you receive. If you need information on how to partition and format the drive, see this article: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q255/8/67.asp Be aware that some computer makers furnish a restore CD that puts the system back to the same condition that the computer was in when you got it. This may include removing all partitions with fdisk and creating the same partitions that existed originally. If you have a restore disk, find out what it does as these instruction are not designed for that type of CD. 1. If you want to install W98 to a clean drive, you can make a W98 Restore disk with the Fat32ebd.exe file located on the W98 CD: tools/mtsutil/fat32ebd 2. Always test the start up disk to make sure it works properly. Before you start, open Windows Explorer and determine where the setup.exe file is located on the W98 CD and make a note of the path needed to get there. a. Insert the floppy restore disk and the W98 CD and reboot. Select the option: Start Computer with CD-Rom Support. When you get to an A: prompt, look at the entry immediately above it and note the letter that was assigned to your CD drive (let's assume it is E:). b. At the A: prompt, type: E: (the drive letter) and hit enter. If you see E: drive, your restore disk is working properly. If the directory does not appear, alter your startup disk in accordance with # 4, below). c. Let's assume your setup.exe file is in a folder called Win98 located at: E:\Win98. The previous action put you at an E: prompt so type: CD Win98 and hit enter (in this instance, the CD stands for change directory). d. If at any time you get confused about what drive you are in, type: DIR and hit enter. DIR is a directory list and this should help you find your place. 3. If you have backed up your data and are ready to load W98, you have to determine whether or not to format the hard drive. In most instances, better results are obtained by loading W98 to a clean drive. If you want to upgrade your current system, skip step a. a. At the prompt, type: A: and hit enter. At the A: prompt, type: Format C: and hit enter. Follow the on screen prompts. When you get a question about a label, type: Win98 and hit enter. b. When the format is complete, type: E: (the letter assumed to be assigned to your CDRom from above) and hit enter. At the E: prompt, type: CD Win98 and hit enter. At the Win98 prompt, type: Setup.exe and hit enter. Follow the on-screen prompts to install the system. 4. If the start up disk doesn't work, you will need to modify it: a. Add your CD driver to the start up disk--it will normally have the letters CD in its name and will have a .sys extension. You may have to look in a W95 start up disk, a CDRom installation disk or the config.sys or config.dos files on your hard drive to find the name of the driver file. b. Open the config.sys file on the start up disk with Notepad. Under the [CD] section, make this entry: device=DDD.sys /D:mscd001 where DDD is your CDRom driver's name. Save the file.