Re: Can't open Xy in XP -- A thousand THANK YOUS!!!

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

J R FOX wrote:
--- Judith Davidsen  wrote:


I found myself spending an additional four weeks
trying to figure out why
I couldn't open files: because I had to reinstall a
whole slew of
programs.

Jordan wrote: ≪what I'm doing now is sort of like the "Changelog"≫


Jordan, that's even better that what I was thinking of. I recommend
methods of knowing where your install CDs--and the wretched codes that
most packages make you use--are, and keeping track of the main apps you
install, but I had not thought of something so detailed. I wonder
though, if many people do as much tweaking as that? I tend to install an
app and leave it, on the premise that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
(I had the patch CD for 98SE for months but refused to install it on a
working system; too many horror stories. Finally did when I had to
install everything afresh on the new box.) I once had, and did use a
couple of times, a freeware util that took a snapshot of one's registry;
so one could run it before and after installing something and would then
know what had changed. Likewise, one can do dir c:\windows\*.*
/s>windir.txt and get a listing of files. But poring over those files to
find the discrepancies (even Xy's file compare command doesn't usually
work, because of different orders, dates, and file sizes) can be so
tedious that one just gives up in despair.

Patricia M. Godfrey