Re-installing windows 98

[Tax Man]

I have a family member who needs help. She ordered DSL service, and the guys came out and installed the modem she needed, etc.

Ever since, however, she has been experiencing a ton of problems. She been on the phone with tech support guys for hours without much luck.

At any rate, the last guy she talked to finally suggested that she may need to re-install windows. I am basically the most computer literate person she knows (which isn't saying much as you'll be able to tell from my questions here), so she asked me to assist her.

I have a couple of questions. She has a bunch of e-mails that she wants to save. Problem is, she can't get on the Internet. Are those messages, etc. saved on her computer locally somewhere so we can back them up, or are they saved on a mail server somewhere that is owned by the ISP?

Will we have to reinstall every program that she has on her computer?

This isn't going to wipe out her hard drive is it? Could we just make a "recovery" directory and save a bunch of crap in there so that we won't lose it?

As you can tell, I've never had this problem with my own PC at home. What am I in for?

[glenn]

I have a couple of questions. She has a bunch of e-mails that she wants to save. Problem is, she can't get on the Internet. Are those messages, etc. saved on her computer locally somewhere so we can back them up, or are they saved on a mail server somewhere that is owned by the ISP?
In outlook go to:
Tools > Options > Maintenance > Store Folder.
This will give you the name of the folder you need to make a copy of. It contains the emails that show up in outlook. When you reinstall, save this folder back to the same spot, then go back to Tools>Main..... and change the store folder to match what it was before you reinstalled.

Will we have to reinstall every program that she has on her computer?
Nope. Just the ones you want to be able to run. Sorry, I just got out of the political thread, and it's spilling over :).

This isn't going to wipe out her hard drive is it? Could we just make a "recovery" directory and save a bunch of crap in there so that we won't lose it?
Yes. It is. In fact I always do a complete reformat. you need to burn some CD's of your data, or hook two computers together and copy them across. If you've got two Windows machines with network cards in them (looks like a telephone jack, but bigger), you can network them by buying a $10 'crossover cable' and connecting the two machines directly. You can then use windows explorer to copy files between the two machines - probably pretty quickly too.

As you can tell, I've never had this problem with my own PC at home. What am I in for?
Reformat of the machine, reinstall windows, then reinstall all software, then any data. Make sure you have all the driver disks for your printer, monitor, etc. Specifically you'll want any and all CD's to do with hardware that they received when they bought the machine. You should find a way to make a COMPLETE backup first (see the crossover cable) because you're likely to miss some data first time through this. After the 'I forgot to make a copy of this data', the biggest problem you're likely to have is finding out that Windows doesn't recognize your modem/screen/printer/whatever. This is where the driver CD's come in.

If you just do a reinstall of windows over top of what is there, you may not fix the problem. What tends to happen is that as you install new programs, the new programs 'update' common files. Eventually the various versions of the common programs get out of synch, you end up with two incompatible versions of two common programs and voila. As to what files are causing the problem, well, no one has access to this info which is why you got the 're-install' windows routine.

FWIW, I have to reinstall windows every 3-6 months.

[glenn]

Two other things - when you use the crossover cable, you'll have to reboot both computers a couple of times, then wait 5 minutes. Seriously.

Secondly, I think the above procedure may not save your address book. I don't know how to save your address book - but suspect there is some sort of export (and corresponding import) function you could use for this.

[Cho Da]

If you are going to wipe the hard drive, punt windoze and go with Linux or BSD. At least create a couple of partitions so that you can in the future. It won't be long before the choice is paying to upgrade to XP, or leaving the coputer open to all sorts of internet mischief once Mircoserf quits supporting 98.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Another thing: Spring for a copy of Partition Magic and partition the hard drive into two. Put as little as possible besides the OS onto the C: drive. That way, when you're totally desperate and have to do a hard drive reformat, you'll save most of your files.

It'll make an easier transition if you go with Cho Da's advice, BTW.

(And Linux is never going to make it as my desktop replacement until I can download RPMs and have it go out on its own to find the inevitably missing libraries.)

[Cho Da]

(And Linux is never going to make it as my desktop replacement until I can download RPMs and have it go out on its own to find the inevitably missing libraries.)
Take a look at FreeBSD. Their ports system is really nice. I moved away from it due to problems in the ata driver, but they claim to have fixed those in 4.7. I think it will soon be time for another go with fdisk. (I do like Slackware, though...)

[Tax Man]

Thanks for the advice, gents.

I went over there last night ready to try and do a reinstallation of Win 98.

I think the problem is basically as glenn has described. She (and her kids) have loaded so much crap on this machine, that it has essentially crapped out. I uninstalled a bunch of programs that they never use anymore to at least declutter some stuff.

Problem is, she didn't have the actual disk with win98 on it. It came installed on her machine already, and she does not recall having the disk. She has everything else but that. She had some recovery disk, but it just had backups of the drivers, and various software that came with the machine.

One other problem....she must have some sort of virus on her machine. We keep getting this error message. The program says "grux" in the title bar, then it says you've performed an illegal operation and it will shut down. So you close it, but a minute later it will pop up again. Of course, I don't think she has ever run a virus scan since she got the computer. The thing is, when I try to run the virus scan software, this "grux" thingie comes up every time, and I never even get to the program. It is as if "grux" has somehow turned off or made it impossible to even run a virus scan. Weird.

One promising thing.....I'm not quite sure that she needs to re-install windows. We were trying to install all of the software,etc. that came with her DSL subscription, and we actually got to the point where we had to connect to the provider's website to register.get our username/password, etc. But it was telling us that they're server was temporarily unavailable. So it seemed to be a problem on their end.??

[Cho Da]

Please! as a favor to the rest of the internet, buy borrow or steal a virus scanner and use it regularly. This is espeically impotant in a world with Klez and Bugbear.

Now that she has DSL, she should install ZoneAlarm as well. An always on internet connection is asking for trouble without the proper defen[s|c]es.

[glenn]

:wall:
You have my sympathies, been there done that. I love the blank stare when you ask for the Win98 or driver disks.

If you managed to clean things up by deleting software, great. There's no gtees that the 'can't connect to server' is actually a problem on their end. I'd bet it's a problem on yours. But now you've got that far, you can probably call tech support at the ISP and have them help you with that one. It sounds like it's probably a setup or software setting issue.

MAKE SURE THEY BUY VIRUS SOFTWARE AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE. Let me repeat that: make sure they buy virus software and keep it up to date. If they don't, I will bet cash that they have a virus within a month (and probably within days.). In fact, if they do that now, you may find some viruses cleaned off that will make the machine run better.

<tan> I was fixing my mother's computer last week. Turned out it only had 350 files infected with a virus. She claimed she didn't think she could get a virus since all she was doing was getting email and surfing the net. Somedays, it's like I'm not related to these people. :shake:

[Tax Man]

As I said before, I am not dealing with a computer literate person....she was all freaked out when she deleted her internet "history" file as if there was no way she could get back to those websites she had visited previously. I said, "well, just type the address back in." "Oh, where do I do that?"

So this is what I'm dealing with. As as you can tell from my questions, I am not a computer guru by any means, but I am light years ahead of this chick.

At any rate, I tried to reload the anti-virus software that came with the computer, but I had the dreaded "grux" message (I can't seem to find a reference to this anywhere, could this be the work of a hacker?) pop up. So I couldn't do it. This was McAfee virus scan.

I have Norton anti-virus on my computer at home. Could I just copy everything onto a CD at my house and then load it onto her machine? Or will there be shared files that need to be updated for which I'll need the actual installation disk?

Thanks again for everyone's suggestions. If we ever get this figured out, I will indeed make sure she knows how to use anti-virus software, updates it regularly, and haveher download zonealarm ASAP.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I have Norton anti-virus on my computer at home. Could I just copy everything onto a CD at my house and then load it onto her machine? Or will there be shared files that need to be updated for which I'll need the actual installation disk?

Problem 1 is that's in violation of the license agreement. Go here (http://www.fprot.org/) instead.

[glenn]

Tax Man, you're plan won't work anyway. You need to either download or install from a disk. Copying files won't work.

OB: I haven't seen Fprot in years., like since before the web. Cool. Thanks for the link!

Tax Man: if you go to Fprot, there's a link at the top of the screen for 'English' (in case you don't speak Swedenborgen). Here's the relevant part of the agreement:

The English-language shareware version of F-PROT antivirus is free of charge for anyone using it on his/her privately owned computer.

[glenn]

BTW, not sure about your grux message. Could be a virus, could require a reinstall of windows, could be anything. A two second google search didn't find anything either. Sorry.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I tried both google and Symantec's AV center without finding anything.

Update: Was somebody doing online gaming in MUDs? Grux appears to be a program involved with that. It wouldn't surprise me if someone hacked up a trojan under that name.

[Moderator2]

Your friend needs to go back to the folks who sold her the computer and get that Win98 installation disk. I don't suppose she kept the receipt. . .

(The way machines come with windows already installed might be OK if reinstallation were never needed. Given the way Windoze works, it's very very bad. Blame Bill Gates!)

[Tax Man]

Since she hasn't been able to get on the Internet, I decided to download that Fprot virus program to my own home computer, burn it on a CD, and then take it over to her house.

So I did all that and I got it onto the CD just fine. So I decided to give it a whirl on my own machine. It said it found two infected files, but it didn't say that it fixed the files. I thought it was supposed to get rid of the viruses, too. Am I missing something.

Disconcerting was the fact that I had just downloaded a new virus definition file from Symantec the night before and run a scan, which I do pretty regularly, and found no viruses.

[Tax Man]

p.s. I should note that I downloaded the FP-WIN version of their software, not the one for DOS. Was that correct? I notice that the FP-WIN version is "trial-ware" and was not labelled as "free." Will I be able to use the DOS version on a Win98 machine? (I really feel stupid asking all these questions - how the hell did I get dragged into this?)

[glenn]

p.s. I should note that I downloaded the FP-WIN version of their software, not the one for DOS. Was that correct? I notice that the FP-WIN version is "trial-ware" and was not labelled as "free." Will I be able to use the DOS version on a Win98 machine?
I had a quick look, I think the windows version is OK to use. though both should work I would grab the windows version.
how the hell did I get dragged into this?)
For the same reason I support a network of P200's at a women's clothing store :shake: .