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Dealing with Disaster!

© Chris Cruickshank

Well, it finally had to happen - I lost my entire hard drive and had to reformat it to get my system back. I had a glorious crash where I lost everything (a "Cannot read from drive C:" error that Scandisk couldn't fix. Directories couldn't be saved either).

This is a moment we all fear and dread with our PCs, but a bit of thought and planning made this a much less traumatic experience than I expected.

This article is about how I got my system back up and running within a few hours.

How was this possible? I had to work out a plan of action to make this as simple a procedure as I could. I also needed to sort out what needed to happen. Here's my list....

1) Get my disaster recovery disk that would put my machine back to the way it was before I purchased it. That meant a totally unacceptable system that didn't have all my programs and settings. But at least I had a "working" system once more. This gave me a Windows 95 system.

2) Get out the driver disks for all my peripherals and install them

3) Check that I had a system with no hardware conflicts (by running the driver disks)

4) Install Windows 98

5) Download and get more drivers that are specific to Windows 98 (this included system patches from my computer manufacturer as well as updated drivers for other peripherals - soundcard etc.)

6) Install my new drivers so that everything was working in Windows 98.

7) Start installing my applications from CDs

8) Start downloading software I had got from the Internet, including a number of shareware titles that I have registered. I would like to digress here for just a second or two

I use programs. Winzip, Cute FTP and ACDSee - all fine shareware programs, all registered. I e-mailed each company to explain that my hard disk was trashed so could they send me my registration keys. Guess what? I had my registration keys returned to me in a few hours. How's THAT for service!

A lot of people don't bother registering and paying for shareware, but it's at times like these that prove that paying for shareware IS worthwhile. Where else would you get such a good service as these three companies have shown? Congratulations to the authors of these three programs, as you have a happy user here! I couldn't ask for better! Moral of this tale? Register and PAY for your shareware if you use it!

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