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Well. I replaced the SCANDISK.EXE with the one I found on a Windows ME setup CD. Unfortunately, the bug still exists. When SCANDISK is about to repair the disk it asks to show where it should write the changes undo file. The possible choice is A: or "cancel undo". In both cases it wants to insert a floppy disk in the drive A:. Then it returns back to the same A: or "cancel undo" window.

Well. It is easy to say, buy a cheap NG version. But in my case we are talking about numerous computers. Buying a license for every computer would be a significant investment. On the other hand I installed my own application on all Windows 98 computers my clients are using. Some of them are in other town, as well. In certain situations I can order to restore the system by phone. Or, they can decide to do it themselves. The main reason to create such a backup system is reduction of the time needed to maintain the remote Windows 98 computers.

But, does the Windows ME have the DOS version of the SCANDISK? I'm not a Windows ME expert. But, it seems Windows ME uses GUI scandisk version, when booting.

Well. - The Norton Ghost is not free, you know. - Not every computer does have a DVD-RW device. - The backup of the whole partition can take more than just one DVD - Backup of just the system folders instead of the whole partition is much faster. - Restoration of the whole partition erases user data. It is much more convenient to restore just the system folders leaving user data unchanged. I've heard the Norton Ghost can do it, as well. But can NG do it in automatic mode? - It is possible to keep system folders backups on the same partition as the system files. System restoration option in the boot menu is a very useful feature.

There is yet another problem related to the ARJ and long file names. DOS is using OEM codepage, while the Windows runs on ANSI codepage. The Windows does convert the ANSI to OEM characters for every DOS 16 bit application. It is not possible to convert all ANSI characters to OEM and back. That's why ARJ is not able to deal with some long file names, correctly. On the other hand ARJ32 is able to store long file names using ANSI codepage. But, the ARJ32 does require windows GUI to run. So, ARJ32 will not work in "clean" DOS. The ANSI to OEM character conversion can be a quite significant problem in some languagage Windows versions.

When the DOS mode SCANDISK.EXE version finds some problems, before starting to fix anything it asks to insert a floppy disk to save changes on it. The problem is, it is not possible to continue without saving the changes. There is an option to abort the save changes to FDD procedure, but it is not working. I had no opportunity to test English language Windows 98 version. But, all Polish language Windows 98 versions do have this bug, as far as I know. If the SCANDISK was started by Windows during a boot, everything works right. But, if the SCANDISK was run from the DOS prompt, the save changes to a floppy disk is a must. I've been using a Windows 95 SCANDISK.EXE version, and it works correctly. But it is not possible to peplace the Windows 98 SCANDISK.EXE file with it, because Windows 98 uses different command switches. I do not want to replace the SCANDISK file with the English language version. I'm looking for solution I could apply on every Windows 98 running computer under my management, and there are quite many of them.

Well, the ARJ does support the long file names as long as the OS supports them. So, the ARJ can not restore long names without Windows running. In clean DOS without Windows core running there is no LFN supports, and ARJ will fail to restore long names. As a matter of fact, I'm using ARJ as well. My application does create file lists and then runs the ARJ during backup and restore jobs. So it is a sort of shell over the ARJ archiver. The file compression is not necesary for storing a copy of system folders, but it makes it much more usefull. As, it takes much less disk space and makes everything much simpler when restoring from CD.

Backing up of a Windows 9x system is relatively easy. It is possible to simply copy all files from Program Files and Windows folders (excluding Win386.swp file) to some other location. The problem is with restoring from such an image. I was using a disk editing software to replace cluster numbers in the directory entries. The system was working, but it was not a solution for my clients. I needed some more automated system. I made a few interesting observations: - LFN support is available when Windows runs WINSTART.BAT file. - all core elements needed before GUI is started are in 8.3 named files. So, it is possible to: - restore core 8.3 named files from DOS without LFN support - then, to start Windows - then, using WINSTART.BAT to restore remaining files with long names I needed a way to divide all files to 8.3 and LFN file lists. As the result I created an application. It creates the two lists, then runs an archiver to make two compressed files using the file lists. As the result, it is possible to restore the OS by selecting an option in the boot menu. If all data files are kept in other folders, the restoration does not affect them. So, it is a quite fast and effective system. There are a few other problems related to the whole concept, but they are not very important. I know not about ways of doing the same kind of things with the newer Microsoft systems. So, the DOS boot ability of Windows 9x systems can be considered as an advantage, I believe.