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Thread ID: 30454	2003-02-20 01:33:00	Big Stuff Up: Reformat Necessary?	Steve_L (763)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
122506	2003-02-20 01:33:00	Big Stuff Up: Reformat Necessary? Win98 has been operating perfectly, but I thought adding Roxio Go Back would be a good idea. Nope. BAD idea. "Go Back" came with Norton System Works 2003, and when I installed these, the system came unglued and will not boot up, not even to Safe Mode. Yeah I know: "If it ain't broken, don't try and fix it!" So I put in my trusty floppy Ultimate Boot Disk and ran a few diagnostics. No improvement. Next I tried the old Win98 Startup floppy. Scandisk and Chkdisk ran, but no improvement. Scandisk's normal scan ran OK but when I did scandisk/all, a heap of errors resulted, which I corrected - but most all were for quite minor directory entries such as for a back up copy of Favorites and other data in my files; I eventually got tired of pressing the Enter key for these corrections and gave up. As a last resort I tried an old (made a month ago) Nortons Zip Rescue (with the floppy). This has saved the system a few times over the last 3 years. Now I have run the diagnostics but with no improvement. The Scan feature gives an error message - maybe because Nortons 2003 uninstalled the old Nortons System Works. BTW, the old Nortons SysWks had a Registry Restore program but it did not always work and was not as easy as WinXP or what Roxio Go Back is supposed to be. Back to Win98 Startup disk... I tried A:\ SYS X but no luck. Also tried SYS X. Sometimes get message "CDR101 not reading drive F". I try various combinations of SYSX, SYS C, SYSC, etc. MS DOS is not my forte. "Bad command" or mostly "required parameter missing" errors come up. Finally, the Ultimate Boot Disk now says "your previous MS-DOS files were not found. MS-DOS startup failed", then it freezes. So I think that the Registry is stuffed big time and a reformat is necessary. Correct? I have everything backed up except a few emails and minor files. The reformat part is OK, but reloading all programs and drivers is such a pain. In the future I wonder if a Norton Ghost of the operating system (put onto CD) would be an idea, or simply copying all of the Windows folder(s) onto CDs. Would this save time reloading drivers, etc? This of course assumes that Windows is operating fine, with no problems that would then be put on an otherwise clean and happy reformatted HD. Thanks, Steve_L	Steve_L (763)
122507	2003-02-20 01:43:00	Yep format time. Tweake had a problem also with goback and doing scandisks I had problems with go-back causing my computer not to boot up because it didn't like my bios. When things went wrong why didn't you use go-back to go to your most recent restore point, or did your computer not even get to the restore screen?	roofus (483)
122508	2003-02-20 01:52:00	At first, I was able to access Go Back, but there was no history at all - nothing saved. Ugh - that was the whole point of installing Go Back. I did reboot a couple of times to see if Go Back worked, and it did - the Safe Points were there along with other history. But then my stuff up: somehow I must have altered the wrong setting in Go Back... what I was trying to do was not to have Go Back run in the background all of the time so that system resources could be saved. Whatever I chose was the wrong one since no history was saved; I assumed that Go Back would ALWAYS save at least one Safe Point to restore to.	Steve_L (763)
122509	2003-02-20 01:59:00	Um it explicityly says if you make change to settings then restore settings will be lost, So this is most likely what has happened. Also go-back must run in the background otherwise how can it maintain restore points? the system restore that comes with windows also runs in the background using resources the only difference is that there is no icon in the tasbar for you to see that it.	roofus (483)
122510	2003-02-20 03:56:00	Ahh Steve...... You should have RTF-NSW2003-M I fear. I just bought NSW 2003 today and it strongly recommends that you Ghost your system before adding any programs. Since you have the whole package, reformat & reinstall your OS then record an image using Ghost and verify it, install your key programs (the ones you know won't munge your system), then record another image and verify it, then install Goback and have a play. Keep both those images permanently, and make a current image every time you make changes and settle to a stable operation. That way you can't get yourself into trouble. I have been using Ghost since the very first version was released and I have never once had to reformat or reinstall my OS & programs, but I have several times restored an image when a wayward program installation stuffed the setup and made it unstable. Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
122511	2003-02-20 06:12:00	Thanks Billy . A question for you about Ghost: using Win98, can the basic system fit on one CD? I have not used Ghost yet but do plan to install it from NSW 2003 . As you suggest, once I get Win 98 back after the reformat, I will Ghost a back up, and then will install the primary software and do another Ghost . Each time I add software, I assume that it is a good idea to Ghost another back up and save it onto CD, right? I do have my HD in two partitions, with 2 Gb as the back up partition, but if the main partition gets corrupted then I guess the Ghosted back up will have to be put back from a CD . OK, now to look in my (paper) file for that reformat DOS command . . . ;-) Cheers, Steve_L	Steve_L (763)
122512	2003-02-20 06:13:00	PS I forgot to add... If the Ghost back up will not fit on one CD, can Ghost span 2 or 3 CDs when needed to restore a corrupt system?	Steve_L (763)
122513	2003-02-20 06:19:00	<<Also go-back must run in the background otherwise how can it maintain restore points?>> Hello roofus, Well, I wanted to manually choose when to make a restore point rather than to have Go Back run in the background all the time . This can be done with the old NSW's Reg Restore or whatever it is called, and I thought that manual restore points can be made with WinXP but I could be wrong here . Anyhow, I have learned my lesson and will let it run in the background rather than risk deleting all of the Restore History . Cheers, Steve_L	Steve_L (763)
122514	2003-02-20 06:38:00	Using Ghost .... Norton Ghost 2003 will happily back up your system onto CD(s) by spanning them. It is done automatically by the program, and it will ask for another CD to be inserted when required. This saved image will also contain the ghost software required to restore the image. You can also save a ghost image to your second partition that can be used if your first partition gets corrupted. The image on the second partition can be accessed with a ghost rescue floppy using DOS. The only problem is that if you get a hard drive failure, your image will also be lost.	Jen C (20)
122515	2003-02-20 07:03:00	Jen is absolutely correct on all counts Steve . If your finances allow, fit a second drive and store your backups on that if using CDs doesn't appeal . Storing your primary backups on the same drive as the source data is like wearing a parachute that's bolted to the plane . It feels very comfortable while everything is going well but if a problem happens, there is nothing you can do but scream all the way down . Cheers Billy 8-{)	Billy T (70)
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