Is there a way to restore original system files without reinstallation

[Ludwig Von Cookie Koopa]

So I have my wonderful Windows 98 machine. However during the years it has taken a couple of beatings.

1. when the drive got bad sectors/errors it plowed over many installed programs and system files. Two programs I care about in particular was affected.

A. A disc recording program.

B. A file transfer program.

A. The disc writing program Alcohol Soft 120% will not install. So I have to turn to something like Cheetah Burner.

Everytime it gives me some kind of error that I know has to do with the regestry. I checked the official website for a patch

( which I no longer have ) and it still did not install. They have no newer versions of the program. I have tried install alternatives but it does the same thing.

B. The file transfer program has a list that tells when and where I am hooked up. The list keeps eating itself and zooming downwards. It should just list the next action taken. I have tried installing other versions.

I know for a fact the file system was damaged, however I have many programs, codecs, patches, unofficial patches, and things installed overtime I do not wish to reinstall and then go back over the things I need to install.

[JustinStacey.x]

In windows 98 you can reinstall the system on top of itself without any I'll effects, I am sure. It is one of the things I love about windows 98

[Fredledingue]

You can copy your system and program files to a DVD, another HD etc. Then when you need to restore your system, just re-copy the files back in DOS mode.

(The level of reliability of such backup/restore method has never been duplicated)

If you don't have such copy, reinstall over it.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

So I have my wonderful Windows 98 machine. However during the years it has taken a couple of beatings.

1. when the drive got bad sectors/errors it plowed over many installed programs and system files. Two programs I care about in particular was affected.

A. A disc recording program.

B. A file transfer program.

A. The disc writing program Alcohol Soft 120% will not install. So I have to turn to something like Cheetah Burner.

Everytime it gives me some kind of error that I know has to do with the regestry. I checked the official website for a patch

( which I no longer have ) and it still did not install. They have no newer versions of the program. I have tried install alternatives but it does the same thing.

B. The file transfer program has a list that tells when and where I am hooked up. The list keeps eating itself and zooming downwards. It should just list the next action taken. I have tried installing other versions.

I know for a fact the file system was damaged, however I have many programs, codecs, patches, unofficial patches, and things installed overtime I do not wish to reinstall and then go back over the things I need to install.

Unless I missed something it sounds as if you are still using a harddrive that has sector damage. If this is in fact true, you should stop trying to fix any broken apps and get out of the file system. The next thing I would do is get a new harddrive, mount it as slave, boot with a suitable cloning disc (Acronis, etc), clone the drive, pull the old one out, boot with the new one (should be 99% intact) and then fix broken apps and system files as they are encountered.

Bad sectors are supposed to be handled at the HDD firmware level behind your back and are invisible to the file system. If they seem to be popping up in the file system, one of two things is likely: the firmware ran out of replacement spare sectors which means the drive for all practical purposes is useless or there was only a configuration error like a BIOS problem or maybe the Windows HDD Controller driver changed. The latter case is fixable albeit carefully.

To be most thorough, I would pull the drive, mount it in a neutral computer (this eliminates your BIOS, case temperature, cables, etc as variables), boot with the harddisk manufacturer diagnostics disc and you will then positively know if the drive is failing. The SMART data may contain some clue (but it is less important than the mfg specific utility).

Either way, fixing broken programs comes later.

[Drugwash]

CharlotteTheHarlot is right in that you need to dump the HDD if the bad sectors surfaced in the file system.

Restoring system files can be a tedious task because you need to take them one by one: check the version number, find an untampered file of the same version and do a binary comparison on them. Incidentally, I'm doing the exact same operation currently, since a machine that has been working fine until yesterday and had been only used sporadically, bailed out on me just when I needed it to fix the registry in my main machine; the 20GB HDD developed a bad sector in... the Windows\System folder.

Anyway, for the operation I'm using Total Commander with the FileInfo plug-in (amongst various others) and for comparison I got its built-in 'Compare by content' function. I perform the comparison with the system files in a third machine that now temporarily hosts the bad HDD, as well as the system files on my main machine via local network connection (router), also using TotCmd and its very handy dual-panel.

This comes out fairly well, considering I got dozens of Filexxx.chk saved by Scandisk. Some of them were perfectly integer and only needed renaming; others had garbage appended as Scandisk filled the last cluster with blank space - those just got replaced with the integer versions from either of the two good machines. Those that were not exe/dll/tlb and had no version info, could be identified by copying some relevant text from the contents shown by the Lister and performing a text search inside the system files of either of the two good machines.

All in all, you're in for a time-eating operation but if you wanna save your current installation that's the way you should go. Good luck!