Not a pleasant thing to hear no matter how little you have on the drive but people are told this almost every day. Why, because the person you are talking to does not know much more about computers than you do. How can this be, you ask? Good, let me explain.

Most of these people are hired from the streets or from a school they just graduated from and know little about Windows version one must less about Windows 98 or later. In addition, you must remember the reason they ask certain questions is that they are reading from a computer screen and a database with most known problems listed.

The first step in helping yourself before leaping off a tall building or throwing your computer out a 20 story window is to stop and think. I know it is hard for some of us but it is necessary, believe me. Do not call until you have tried a few of these first. If you are afraid to try then you will have to call. If the first or second words out of the person’s mouth is “format your drive” or “restore it to original state”, thank them and hang up. Then, call back. You will get another person, hopefully someone who knows what they are doing. You will have to find someone who can read and who can use basic knowledge to comprehend what the problem is. They do have such but I cannot tell you how many calls you will have to make to find that particular person.

I have worked with these programs since the first version came out. I have gone through the good ones and the bad ones and have learned a few tricks along the way. Would you like to know some of them? Well then, read on and I will let you in on a few secrets so the next time you call help you will not have to cry, “HELP”.

You should have an area on your hard drive or a CD that came with the machine that has windows XP in it or on it. If so, do not run it and restore to original format unless you do not have any data you need to save or pictures you have no other copies of or anything else you might have a need for.

If there is a copy of Windows XP on your hard drive and you cannot boot to a system disk or to the hard drive, then you are in for a sad day as there will not be any way to install Windows as the files will not let you do so without a portion of hard disk space to install files to run the setup. There is another inherent problem with a windows installation as it looks at some date on the machine and will then tell you the version on the machine is newer than the one your installing even though it is the same disk the program was install by. This problem is by passed when run from the hard drive. I always put a dos partition on all the machines I build to avoid this particular problem. No other company that I am aware of does this, except one.

If there is a way to run windows then all you have to do is start it, let it run and when it reboots and ask if you want to reinstall the first time click continue. Then when it asks the second time if you want to restore your system let it do so. It will then take all the information in your registry and put it into the update it is performing. This way you do not loss any programs or any settings and as long as the problem was not in the registry, you will be back in business in short order.

If it becomes necessary to delete the registry then almost all other programs will have to be reinstalled as most programs use the registry to register their software.

Companies like Adobe use to make Photoshop 7 so that you could copy it from one machine to another or one hard drive to another without having to go and install all the files over. I suppose they think that will stop thief of software but as far as I can see all it does is cause people who legitimately buy the software to have more problems and do more work if the machine crashes. A lock is only to keep honest people honest. Maybe the software people should learn this.

Now if after reinstalling the windows programs you are still having problems there are files in the root directory that you can delete and make a cleaner installation, If you want to do this, you have to run a program from the root directory to reset the files so you can then delete them. At the C:\ prompt type, attrib *.* –s –h –r and this will reset the attributes on the files and you can delete them. Do not delete the command.com file or you will be looking for a disk so you can boot the machine should it become necessary. However, if you use a boot CD, it will automatically reinstall the command program or if you do not reboot after deleting the files it will also reinstall the program if necessary. Once this is done, go to the I386 directory, which will be a subdirectory of Windows XP and run winnt.exe. After this has started, do as stated before and simply do a restore on the second time it ask and it will restore all you original files and you should be up and flying again soon.

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About the author Larry G. McMillan: I am retired Navy and on social security. I am 73 years old and have written the following books:

www.myrambllings.org a book on poetry

www.electronicthief.com a Si-Fi book

Scarlet Widow a book about a young girl and her life with an older man

My Ramblings: A continuing Adventure in Poetry

My Ramblings: In Our Image...



Email: larry@mailsrv.net

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