System Migration {was: Re: Dumb question re back up}

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Harry Binswanger wrote:

> I'm thinking of upgrading from win98 to win98SE.   . . .
>
> Which brings up the issue of preventing re-installing all my apps. I backup
> by copying every file from my Boot-and-Main-Drive (C:) over to a physically
> separate drive (D:). I use Xcopy32, from within Windows, and it copies
> everything except the swap file and a few other in-use files.
>
> My dumb question is: since all the files for all my apps are on D:, is
> there any way to scrub C:, install say win98SE, then do some kind of bulk
> copying back from D: to re-install the apps? I guess I'm dreaming. I was
> thinking about things like copying D:\Windows\System to
> C:\Windows\System. But I take it that the idiocy of Windows includes NOT
> separating app-files from OS-files in any way that would allow this kind of
> restoring of apps.
>
> Or is there hope?

I have a continuing interest in this and related isssues . . . because if you
ever have to re-do your OS from scratch, with all the app.s etc., trust me --
it will be very time-consuming, a lot of work, and not a fun experience. I
have heard of different potential or partial solutions, which I will recap here
for you. I'd really like to find one that definitely works for WIN, even if it
costs something. At a minimum, the desired target should be this: if your OS
is hosed, and you have to reinstall it from scratch (or upgrade to a later
ver.), there should be some way to take that blank OS slate and superimpose a
"personality transplant" onto the fresh install, restoring your exact desktop,
all of your installed app.s with their necessary connections and the defaults /
preferences you have laboriously established over time, printers & drivers,
Internet setup with your dialers &/or broadband support -- in short, everything
you were used to for your workspace and resources. (No doubt, most of us have
some system things that we had to futz with until they worked, or until they
would cooperate with other system things, and, years later, it would be very
difficult to retrace those steps.)

In OS/2, we have a very good system maintenance suite called UniMaint. It has
a feature called "Portable Backup," which is supposed to cover much if not most
of this. (I'm not sure if it is supposed to be able to transport these things
to a different drive designation, which has to be a lot more difficult, if it
is possible at all.) I have never actually used this feature myself. Some
user reports indicate that it worked for them, others say it did not. A Your
Mileage May Vary sort of thing, I guess. In any case, I've been looking for
some WIN utility along these lines for some time now.

There is or was a utility included with Partition Magic, called Magic Mover,
that claimed to be able to relocate app.s, incl. their location references and
file associations . . . but I think this was one by one. A utility for WIN
that I use, ConfigSafe, backs up multiple versions of the WIN Registry, so the
Registry can be "backlevelled," in case it gets seriously messed up by
something. (In Windows, there are plenty of "somethings" well capable of
causing this to happen.) It also has a feature that allows you to export your
Registry. It could then, in theory, be restored from outside of WIN, if
necessary. Maybe even grafted onto a fresh install of the same OS ? I dunno,
but this might go part of the way towards accomplishing what UniMaint's
Portable Backup is suppsed to do in OS/2.

There is a shareware utility set for WIN called ProfileCopy, from a Co. in
Germany, that is supposed to transport your desktop and a lot of your
settings. Finally, there is the giant moving van, a $60. program called Aloha
Bob PC Relocator. Per reviews I have read, it is supposed to cover just about
everything I've mentioned, migration-wise, with the caveat that this must be a
transfer to the same *or selected later versions of* WIN, with the same roster
of hardware. Oh, and it can take several hours to do its job. Again, I don't
know about the possibility of changing drive assignments in the process.

Let me know if you need URLs for any of these, and I'll dig them out.

Jordan