OT: Follow up to computer problem

ASSuming you have not lost the driver disk for the motherboard, and the network interface. If you need to get on the internet to get the chipset drivers and network drivers you are pretty much screwed.

Catch 22 anyone???

The whole *concept* of the registry is evil.

I've had to reinstall Win on every machine I've owned, well, that had Win on it. After some time they just grind to a halt, if not crash a horrible death.

If the world was perfect we could all be good little communists.

on the internet is a quick and

I think you are making this harder than necessary. If you have the OS or OEM reinstall disk, that is all you need. That is all I used with a new HD. Typically the generic drivers on those disks work good enough to start.

It's obvious you don't know how to maintain your system. The system I'm on right now has not been re-installed in almost 6 years, and it is still working just fine - and it gets pretty heavy use.

The world doesn't have to be perfect, and what's politics got to do with it??? Simple fact. Nothing is perfect, but the computing industry would be far worse off without Microsoft (or any other company with the critical mass to establish and , to a degree, enforce standards.

That's what I mean by the "motherboard disk" Not all machines are like "the dell from hell" that comes with a restore disk. Some still come with driver disks and a more or less generic Windows install disk. They are MUCH better, because you can do several different types of repair installs without loosing any data, or having to reinstall software. With a "restore disk" all you can do is return the machine to "as shipped"

RE: Subject

I'm smiling at how complex things have gotten.

Other than an Images directory that gets copied to a CD every time an update is made, all my important stuff are basically text files that get copied to a 2 gig flash drive using "Xcopy" everytime a file is closed.

Love that DOS 2.0.

Be a cold day if that flash drive gets full, but just in case, have a

Can still give youi a list of cancelled checks from the mid '80s.

Lew

We've been using Carbonite on Juanita's Mac now for about a year (unfortunately, they don't have a linux client, so I'm stuck using a USB drive for backup on my computer). It really is cheap insurance for off-site backup. It took about 2 weeks for the first upload to complete. Now, it's simply doing incrementals and those go fast.

Yeah, I did not have a restore disk to restore to shipped condition. I did not get all the crap that was originally shipped when I installed a new HD and reinstalled the OS. I did have all the driver disks also but those were not necessary, I simply went straight to the internet and down loaded and installed the latest drivers. And I could have simply reinstalled over the current old HD data and programs had I not put in a new larger HD.

I did images too but those don't always play well when changing brands and sizes of HD's depending on which imaging software you use. And seriousely It was less trouble to reinstall everything, and I have probably 50-60 programs, than to do images periodically. Now I simply back up my data.

I can only go back to early 87. ;~) did you ever of Dollars & Sence? Great DOS financial program. IMHO it took Quicken about 15 years to catch up to that program.

------------------------------- Started with T/Maker which was written in CP/M and 64K limitations which was updated to T/Masster and DOS 2.0.

They knew how to write code back then.

Can create database files that 20 years can't be duplicated.

Almost every thing I do are database type files.

Spread sheets suck IMHO.

Can do hex edit as well as desktop publishing.

Never found a need for another program.

Lew

"Leon" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

There are fairly cheap utilities that copy a hard disk's contents to a new larger hard drive, so reinstalling everything isn't necessary. Of course you lose the catharsis of reinstalling, but if the old drive worked and is just too small, or if you want a real good image, then this is the way to go, IMO.

Besides Carbonite, I still back up to a local hard drive using xcopy and Window's Scheduler every night.

An extra bit of back up peace-of-mind for less than $60 a year is hard to beat, and has other benefits.

There have been a number of times recently when I needed to email someone a file that was on my laptop, and being out of the office, was able to do so from my Blackberry using Carbonite's app, and with the same ease as if I'd been sitting at my laptop.

That ability alone has been worth the $5/month.

Biggest gripe from the instant gratification bunch seems to be the time it takes to totally restore data from the "cloud" ... that is something that does not concern me in the least as long as I can immediately access those few important files that would, in most catastrophic data losses, be gone forever.

Snip

I discovered Dropbox. It is a manual program in that you must copy files into a "My Dropbox" folder but it only copies what is in that folder. All encripted and automatic once the files hit that folder. Limit of 2GB so you only want to put important files in there. Price is right, free, integrates well with Directory Opus, iPhone application, access fron any other computer etc, and no blue screed of death so far. ;~)

There is no reason a system should require maintenance. But, yeah, I do. Windows simply sucks.

A simile.

Nonsense.