How does one backup windows me?

[Krazedhermit]

My question is simple. But I will tell you all the whole sorrid afair, because I'm rather angry about it.

A few games are coming out soon, and I was going to upgrade my graphics card. Only problem is, I find out that my motherboard does not have an AGP slot. So I've decided to upgrade the motherboard first. I called Hewlett Packard to ask what I needed to know.

One of the things they tell me, is that the System Recovery disks, will not work anymore if I should replace the motherboard with a diffrent one. Thus, if for any reason I need to reinstall Windows ME, I'm out of luck. My computer did not even come the CD of Windows ME. I guess they knew ahead of time what I would do or something

So. In summary. How do I go about this? Can I backup Windows ME somehow? Or am I basically in trouble and will be forced to go out and buy Windows Me? I'd appreciate any answers that I can get. Thank you.

I'm a hermit. What do you want? Go away.

 

[hammerhead]

If you're gonna change the motherboard, then you really should install Windows from scratch after the swap. It's not impossible to swap without doing it, but can cause all sorts of odd problems.

Unfortunately the likes of HP and Compaq provide recovery disks that, as you've found out, are bloody useless once the hardware has changed.

Your best bet is to find someone with a proper Win Me CD and borrow it. You already have a license, don't pay for a new copy of the OS if you can possibly avoid it.

 

[Zoron]

It is possible to make your own Win ME CD from the files on your hard drive...

HP and Compaq put all of the Windows .cab files on your hard drive. They can be found in C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS. If you have a CD-R or CD-RW it's possible to burn these files to a blank and create a Windows ME CD that way. The one thing you have to make sure of is that all the necessary files are there to perform setup. Toe made an earlier post about this, he knows which files must be there to make it work. (I know that Setup.exe is one of them)

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[btvillarin]

<A HREF="http://www.easydesksoftware.com/recovery.htm" target="_new">Making a Windows CD from a Recovery Disk</A>

<font color=red><A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/btvillarin" target="_new">My Windows XP-based Website</A></font color=red>