[BC] Computer question

[WBRadiolists at aol.com]

In a message dated 04/25/2008 2:05:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
glen.kippel at gmail.com writes:

> This stuff is all new to me, as I normally set up a network and it works and
>  I leave it alone.  I've never had to mess around with this ____ before,
>  especially building computers out of cannibalized parts. 

I've been doing it for YEARS... but with WIN98SE systems, and it's truly a 
snap. At least with 98SE, I can simply create a ZIP file of the entire HD, then 
unzip that file onto a new HD. Instant, perfect backup "clone". Done it dozens 
of times, already, to keep full backups of my system on 3 seperate HD's. When 
one fails, I can just pop-in the backup, and pick up from where I left off!

As others have pointed out, NTFS-based Windows (WIN2K, XP) is *extremely* 
fussy about what it sees on boot-up. If it doesn't see the *exact same* hardware 
configuation as it was installed upon, it either blue screens or drops dead 
completely. (At least 98SE could be coaxed into starting-up on a new system, by 
letting it install a myriad of drivers.)

I have had great success with restoring data from dead XP machines, also! In 
some cases, though, XP won't read the drive from another machine without that 
machine's password... so if I don't have that, I get past it by using LINUX! 
Linux will easily read the NTFS partitions, allowing you to copy your files. 
I've saved quite a number of files, and made people's days, by doing this. :)

Put the HD from the dead machine into another machine as the slave... thus 
the other machine boots normally, and simply sees it as a new, second HD. You 
should have no problem copying files. If the password issue does come up, you 
can use a Linux "LiveCD" to boot and copy the files.

Willie...





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