Mishedlo:
You are learning the hard way, as I did after much pain. Here's what I have adopted as my computer survival guidelines:
1. Never buy a computer from Dell or Gateway or any box off the shelf in stores. Have a custom outfit put one together for you. I use Motherboard Express, but there are others. They will guide you to the proper motherboard, processor, peripherals which will work best for you. You will never have to worry about Dell's special drivers, etc. when things go wrong in the future. You can go directly to the hardware or software maker's website and get the latest drivers directly from them.
2. Get a second hard drive and use Drive Image (Powerquest) to create an image of your C drive on the second hard drive. Do this at least once a week. If big time screwups occur, you can format your c drive and restore EVERYTHING, programs, data, registry entries, from Drive Image in about 20 minutes. All you will lose is what was changed since your last Drive Image was created. Norton Ghost will do the same thing, but I think DI works better with win 2K.
3. Back up important folders and data daily just by copying them to the second HD. Then you can restore them and really be up to date after the Drive Image backup.
4. Don't use IE as your primary browser. I prefer Netscape, but Opera has good reviews. (When I tried Opera a couple of years ago, it didn't work well with win2K, so I stick with Netscape). Use IE only as a backup browser.
I feel for your pain, having gone through many such problems in the past.
Best wishes,
Jack |
