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[Angel Of Death]

Younger sibling?

Don't have any younger siblings. I may have been REALLY tired one time and put it in the cupboard wrong.

[Starver]

edit: Ah, this answer to the "can''t find my disc" still applies to the "found my disc, but it's broke" issue just announced.

Recovery partitions?

Failing that, which particular (presumably Windows) OS?  Is it OEM?  You're almost certainly going to know someone who hasn't lost their copy of the installation disks, whether 95/98 or 7, although there are some versions where the product key (which is stuck on the case, right?) will only work with some seemingly manufactur-specific (or OEM/non-OEM defined, or SP-level) versions of the install disk, so you may have to install with their key (with their permission) and then use the offical MS Key Changer.

I'm trying to cover all eventualities, there.  It's probably simple.

[Virex]

Not the worst I've seen, but the one of the worst I've seen (and remembered to get a screenshot) where I didn't have to totally start from scratch to begin with.  (After the above check'n'clean everything was backed up and it was reinstalled from scratch, obviously, but some things are easier to retrieve from a nominally cleaned machine.

I'm always wondering how people make sure the backups they make don't contain any virii? I could just be paranoid, but to me getting any file from an infected disk seems like a liability.

[Angel Of Death]

edit: Ah, this answer to the "can''t find my disc" still applies to the "found my disc, but it's broke" issue just announced.

Recovery partitions?

Failing that, which particular (presumably Windows) OS?  Is it OEM?  You're almost certainly going to know someone who hasn't lost their copy of the installation disks, whether 95/98 or 7, although there are some versions where the product key (which is stuck on the case, right?) will only work with some seemingly manufactur-specific (or OEM/non-OEM defined, or SP-level) versions of the install disk, so you may have to install with their key (with their permission) and then use the offical MS Key Changer.

I'm trying to cover all eventualities, there.  It's probably simple.

Windows 7, Ultimate 64 bit.

[Darvi]

Ultimate? What a waste of money <_<

[Angel Of Death]

Ultimate? What a waste of money <_<

It's not such a bad thing when someone else paid for it.

[Starver]

I'm always wondering how people make sure the backups they make don't contain any virii? I could just be paranoid, but to me getting any file from an infected disk seems like a liability.

Firstly, the file types.  Images cannot[1] contain viruses, so copying over the pictures from the old machine.  You have to be more careful about office-style documents with macros in them, but they aren't at least natively executable.  Generally, those would be the only files I'd migrate across from machine to machine.  Copying programs across generally doesn't work anyway, and would need reinstalling (although I'd be happy to take savegame files, then worry about how to poke them into the new setup's structure later, according to how portable the games-writer had made the system), so executables would be a no-no.

Secondly, the device or media on which I'd transfer the files would get a good scan, to make sure I hadn't accidentally picked up something rogue such as ".../My Documents/My Pictures/family photos/meandthekids.jpg   <loadsaspaces>    .exe" without noticing.

Thirdly, I'd have AV installed on the fresh system from the start, and updated.  Usually the reason for the original infection was that it was an expired subscription of the trial (or 12-months from purchase) AV that came with the machine from the retailer.  And even if it wasn't expired, it's probable that whatever got around the original incarnation of AV will now be caught by the now updated version.  (Unless finding a zero-day exploit before the AV company can get a protection out there, but that's not so likely as to worry me unduly.)

Finally, some basic research about the discovered virus(es[2]) tells me what footprint and configuration changes to expect, which can be investigated on nboth original and refreshed setup to catch anything that might somehow get pat the above precautions and give me cause for concern.


Regardless, it's definitely safer than just using the scan'n'clean (even though I'd regularly use at least three different AV utilities, not counting spyware and tracking cookie scanners) and keeping on using the possibly badly rootkitted machine without a complete formatting reinstall.


yetanotherninjaedit: Not yet so much of a fan of (any variant of) 7 that I've used it much (although I've (re-)installed it on a number of machines, as required), but I think the idea with 7 is that any install disc contains anything required for any version of 7, from Starter (for netbooks) to the Ultimate versions.  So you should be able to take anyone's Win7 install discs and put your licence key in and it would install... So anyone with a recent machine could help you out.

[1] With a couple of notable exceptions shown to work in Proof Of Concepts, but really not relevant here.

[2] "Virii" is an incorrect plural of the word, which doesn't stop me using it, but I'm just letting you know.

[Angel Of Death]

I have to say something.
 
I hate Windows 7 and the only reason why I upgraded was because I had Vista beforehand. I'm searching for my old Windows XP disk as I write this. Oh, will my modern games run on Windows XP service pack 2?

I can't find my Windows XP disk. And I'm 100% sure that it was intact last time I saw it.

[Starver]

A lot should do.  It's still a couple of years (I think, although might be down to one... what's today's date again? ) before MS essentially drops all XP support, so games of today should be handling the range of XP->Vista->7[1].  Nothing I've personally invested time or energy in playing has been Vista-onwards in nature (and I still work on XP), although there's a definite variance over whether you can get them working on 2K (mostly because it was still a business-environment OS, even though it was more game-friendly than its NT precursors).

And when you install XP SP2, go through all the priority updates it gives you.  You'll get SP3, amongst everything else.  And under the optional updates there's .NET stuff which some software might need, although I avoid things like the Windows Search 4.0, for exactly the same reason as I don't like the Vista/7 cataloguing feature which this essentially is.  The silverlight installs are something I'm not too sure about, I think they're only applicable to the browser.  Although I've never found them problematic by their absence, even when surfing, put it that way.

Noting that you need a valid XP licence, that there'll be Windows activation and WGV to go through, so make sure you're at least casually entitled to back-install to XP, in case you need to resort to phoning Microsoft up to complete registration.  If it comes to that, they don't usually complain (assuming I even get put through to a live person) when I've had to do a replacement motherboard in a system.  Although nobody seems to mention that I'm also changing the processor and memory, and while I'm at the HDD could do with being swapped out for something larger...

HTH, HAND.


[1] Some XP-era games still don't work well with Vista, but do with 7, but anything Vista-onwards should be happy with that.  Not the expert on all of this, though, and I know some games company (especially MS's own games division) might well be lazy and/or pro-active enough to drop testing for XP, at the very least.

[Angel Of Death]

A lot should do.  It's still a couple of years (I think, although might be down to one... what's today's date again? ) before MS essentially drops all XP support, so games of today should be handling the range of XP->Vista->7[1].  Nothing I've personally invested time or energy in playing has been Vista-onwards in nature (and I still work on XP), although there's a definite variance over whether you can get them working on 2K (mostly because it was still a business-environment OS, even though it was more game-friendly than its NT precursors).

And when you install XP SP2, go through all the priority updates it gives you.  You'll get SP3, amongst everything else.  And under the optional updates there's .NET stuff which some software might need, although I avoid things like the Windows Search 4.0, for exactly the same reason as I don't like the Vista/7 cataloguing feature which this essentially is.  The silverlight installs are something I'm not too sure about, I think they're only applicable to the browser.  Although I've never found them problematic by their absence, even when surfing, put it that way.

Noting that you need a valid XP licence, that there'll be Windows activation and WGV to go through, so make sure you're at least casually entitled to back-install to XP, in case you need to resort to phoning Microsoft up to complete registration.  If it comes to that, they don't usually complain (assuming I even get put through to a live person) when I've had to do a replacement motherboard in a system.  Although nobody seems to mention that I'm also changing the processor and memory, and while I'm at the HDD could do with being swapped out for something larger...

HTH, HAND.


[1] Some XP-era games still don't work well with Vista, but do with 7, but anything Vista-onwards should be happy with that.  Not the expert on all of this, though, and I know some games company (especially MS's own games division) might well be lazy and/or pro-active enough to drop testing for XP, at the very least.

Service Pack 3 won't run some of the games I want it to run.

[Starver]

Service Pack 3 won't run some of the games I want it to run.

Ah, that's games older than (or too soon after) SP3 that don't take account of some of the tightening up of the system (or just plain messing about with) that this service pack did, then.  And at the same time other, and newer, games that you're worried won't work with XP (or at least XP pre-SP3).  Tricky.  Bit of a conundrum.

Dual-boot XP(SP2)+XP(SP3)?  Is that doable/allowed/practical* as far you're concerned?  If not, XP(SP2) plus some later version of Windows that you're happy with.  Again, getting that working right might be a bit interesting.

[* - Delete whichever is/are inapplicable]


I think the only way to know is to try everything out.  I'd go for checking to see if the SP3-unfriendly games (or particular games which are spoilt by the game-unfriendly SP3, whichever...) have fixes and get-arounds out there for an SP3 environment.  That's because while there are some things that I'm not happy with in the whole XP update situation[1], I'd much rather have an XP environment patched and updated up to the nines (the previously noted exceptions... er... excepted) than have it sitting at an SP2 level just because of an individual game whose writers didn't have any interest in granting a solution to get around various changes... 

But I feel I'm probably proselytising a bit, there.  One way or another, this whole situation might need a bit of re-reinstalling, if rolling back doesn't correct certain things, so tread lightly (but test fully!) before you settle on the solution you want.


Another alternative, dual-boot again, but this time one the fully-updated XP, the other a decent Linux distro with an up-to-date WINE.  See if WINE can play anything that the XP no longer can?  Again, might need a lot of fiddling under the hood, in some way or form, but it's another option.


[1] Most particularly, if a machine is set up as a UK locale, with a UK keyboard, with UK everything (which takes more trouble than it's worth, and at least one thing good about Vista and onwards is that you say "This is for the UK!" on set-up and you don't have to go in and make sure obscure things like the non-Unicode behaviour is also set to your region, unless you want to make it other than the logically connected choice) and then, because you have absolutely no interest in having a US keyboard layout, you remove that from the configuration and moreover disable the language taskbar icons, then you install various updates from the SP3-era, if not SP3 itself, and it'll do silly stuff like re-adding in the language taskbar icons!  That little "En" icon gets on my nerves.  There's a couple I know who have recently come to the UK from Australia and have an Aussie English keyboard (subtly different, but can't remember how, probably the GBP symbol isn't there, though, nor the Euro), and they have the "En" on for much the same reason, even though they'll never need to be using a UK English layout.  But I leave it there because it's no my place to make such decisions on their behalf.  'Scuse me, going off on a tangent there.