Swapping Harddrives - Keeping Old Data

[kopfjaeger]

I've done this before, with mixed results. My question is whether there is a better way -- and I suspect there is.

I have two Win98 SS7 machines. Because each machine has a slightly different case and motherboard, I'd like to swap the harddrives out and keep the data that's stored in each.

No doubt, upon installation into the other machine, the registry on the harddrive is going to have some serious cognitive dissonance.

What I have usually done in cases like this is to back up the data, fdisk, reformat and do a clean Win98 install.

That's a serious pain.

Is is possible simply to back up the registry, set it to default and reconfigure the harddrive to match its new machine?

TIA

KJ

[Bill in SD, CA]

Interesting question.

Don't know the answer but maybe this site will be of use to you.

CHANGING MOTHERBOARDS AND KEEPING WINDOWS

Bill

[John Prophet]

Getting to be one of the most popular questions on Techimo lately.

The normal thing to do is


First..you might try to uninstall as many drivers from the old setup as possible.

Then

swap the drives

when you first bootup with the swapped drive....boot into SAFE MODE

Then upon booting into safe mode...run "regedit"...and delete the "hkey local machine /enum folder"

then when you reboot into windows it will have to re-detect all the hardware again.

It will start by telling you that your display properties are incorrect and ask if you'd like to start the hardware detection wizard...which you do want to start

Then it'll start detecting stuff etc...try not to reboot until it finishes finding it all.

One thing you might want to do...which I take for granted cuz I always do it anyway...is copy the "win98" folder off of the w98se cd onto the hard drive.....that will save you a lot of grief...especially since the cdrom may not work at first after you delete the enum folder....so put the "win98" folder on the hard drive first so it will find the windows drivers for all the hardware.

It will detect some stuff twice, like the keyboard etc....do delete all of the doubled entries in the device manager and reboot and make it detect them again so you only have singled entries.


This method USUALLY but not always, works.

JP

If it doesnt work...you can always just reinstall windows over the top of the old install

[Bill in SD, CA]

Originally posted by John Prophet
Getting to be one of the most popular questions on Techimo lately.

I've noticed this also.

Bill

[kranich]

My opinion-

Trying to tweak the registry etc afrer swapping disks is WAY MORE headache than doing it old school.

[kopfjaeger]

Good tips, all!

And yes, I normally copy the Win98 cab files to a folder by that name, and it does prevent a lot of hunting for the install CD.

Great, thanks all!