This is a hard question.

[Lester]

If you understand DOS then read on. If not - thx for dropping by!

Here's the scenario:

Video shop. DOS video rental software. Win98.

Win98 is playing up an really needs to e reinstalled. To be safe it would be nice to format and reinstall but the video rental software is copy protected and if copied to another pc will stop working - it has a token thingy that prevents unautherised copies.
So I try to reinstall windows - ren win.com win2.com - e:setup exe

However I get the message "windows cant setup you have a compressed area on yr hard drive. remove the compression utility yada yada or somesuch."

So. The only way to safely copy the video program is to clone it. (But not all the drive - that way lies madness) then if that works , format, reinstall and clone back the vid prog.

It looks, to me, as if I need some (free) clone software that lets you specify which bits you want.

The vid prog does not run through windows so I could deltree but that would not sort out the compressed disc space prob.

BTW the prob with win98 is that it doesn't boot or BSD's on loading. I could maybe copy a known good registry/boot bit?


Let me say again I cannot lose the vid software so any solution has to be risk free or testable first.

Enjoy.

 

[Testin da Cable]

before you do anything, anything at all...make a backup. I presume you've already done this?

 

[Lester]

Do I look stupid?

Err don't answer that.


I can back up the data for the vid prog and restore it no prob. But if the vid prog "token" thingy goes to "0" I'm screwed. So I can't actually backup the prog - (unless I can clone it)

 

[Testin da Cable]

err, to hazard a guess it's about your rental database or something aye? oh dear um, can you run an export from it? perhaps that could be used to populate a new, more current database thingy. I know I'm not being helpful

 

[Lester]

Aye. Well the way it works is the rental prog is a dos .exe and its full of all the members, films, stock, audit history, overdues, deleted films etc etc. I can back up all the latter but the prog. I can copy the prog but on the new PC the actual "renting" facility is missing because the security token has been reset to 0. You can generate a new token by ringing the software vendor and paying £150 in support. A bit much for moving MY program. I know it's there so that I can't run it in 30 shops for free, but hey.

The only way to move it is to clone it so that the dongle/token whatever is copied in entirety. But I don't want to copy my drive as it's poorly.

I could get new software but that's money again. (not that I don't have, any I'm just mean )

 

[Testin da Cable]

trying to avoid idiot costs isn't mean. um, can you get a new drive...install windows on that and hang the poorly drive in as a slave?

 

[Lester]

Vid prog won't work unless its's c:

 

[Testin da Cable]

fs

 

[smurkin]

I'd bet the program is checking the hard drive volume ID....how else would it know if youve put it on another hard drive ? (perhaps I'm showing my ignorance here :/ )

Well if thats so...you could try copying the unique ID from the old hard drive to the new drive and trying a simple manual copy of the program. The program to do this is VolumeID

At your own risk of course...cant guarantee it will work

 

[Scooba Da Bass]

Originally posted by Lester
Vid prog won't work unless its's c:

Stick in a new drive, windows 98 on there, keep the old one as C:, but you're booting off the new D: drive. I can't see any obvious reason why this shouldn't work?

 

[Lester]

mmmmmm interesting.....

I'll try it tomorrow.

*tries to buy second hand 10 gig*

*cheap bastard*

 

[Mellow-]

Compressing drives is possibly the worst thing you can do ... ever. In my opinion anyway.

 

[Lester]

Tbh I don't recall ever doing it


Maybe it did it itself. I did squeeze the hard drive a bit when I put it in.

 

[Lester]

UPDATE:

Weird.

I got a spare hard drive, installed win98 on it. Used my original hard drive as a slave ( d: ) and lo and behold the video prog worked form d: - which it shouldn't, coz it didn't before when I tried it. Anyhoo it works at the mo so panic over. However the drive is still poorly and will, no doubt, fall over at some time in the future (probably 8.p.m. on the busiest saturday night of the year) so the question still remains - can I clone selected files (as opposed to the whole drive) and put them onto another hard drive? Without a cd writer btw.

I could put a writer in I guess and do it that way but if there is a two bob prog around that will do it *snaps fingers* like that, it would be super. Thx for the help so far.