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ron-c

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Copying WIN95

Is there an easy way to move a win95 setup from one machine to another machine without having to re-install win95 and all the apps running on it.  The machine that has win95 on it may be 486 100mhz, with 16 meg, and 800 meg HD, it needs to be moved to a Pentium of some sort with 32 megs and 2 gig HD.  They are networked on novell 4.11, I do have access to Arcseve 6 to backup the workstations.
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Gumby

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stratari

I have copied my Win95 from HD to a CD-ROM. So, i just copy them back if i need a re-installation. It's tricky though. I would NOT recommend it if you don't have experience.

ron-c,
     How similar are the two machines?  Are they at least from the same manufacturer?  Win95 will *freak out* over *any* differences between the two systems.  If the two systems have similar hardware configurations (i.e. same address/int and make/model for expansion cards) it can be done.  Most likely your system will not have the same I/O controller or video adapter, but safe mode and system bios should take care of that.  I tend to agree with *Gumby* and *stratari* about it not being for the inexperienced or squeamish.  But depending on how many applications and settings you have on the PC it may save you a few hours to copy the system.  However if any hardware conflicts arise by the copy, it may add a few hours.  If it’s a fairly *clean* system (i.e. not a lot of apps) I suggest you do a fresh install.  This would also clean out any windows clutter your system may have accumulated since the original Win95 install.
Hi!
I stepped through about 150 installations and reinstallations Win95 on different machines with same software configurations.
And I found that more useful is:
-- In REGEDIT export to .REG files ALL entries in LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE and CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE
-- Install Win95 on new machine and copy all files from old machine (except system and configuration files of win95)
-- merge created .REG files on new machine

In brief: Windows registry contains information on hardware and software -> so you need to transfer ONLY software information!
I move Win95 from hdd to hdd nearly every day successfully. My method requires a second hdd of the same or larger capacity as the original win95 drive along with Partition Magic 3.0 from Powerquest Corp. Using PM, simply copy the win95 partition from one drive to the other - everything moves perfectly for me each time. Be sure to have the Fat32 options set to your preference before the copy. This method generally takes about 10-15 minutes with a 1.6G drive. However, be aware that lost clusters and other damaged files are moved intact so the problem will follow you.