kony wrote:
>
.... snip ...
>
> I gave examples above of copying the entire subkey. That
> will be a little extra clutter in your registry, but if you
> wanted to you could always expand these subkeys and manually
> delete any of the next level that you recognize as being no
> longer on the system. Likewise with the apps, you'll have
> to copy them all over and while it would be easy to just say
> "they're all in your program files folder", they might not
> be, you'd be getting the bulk of them in one shot then
> dealing with the few odd things remaining.
>
> The main thing to remember is you're not changing your
> existing installation, and by making incremental backups of
> the new installation at worst what you'll have is a ready to
> use OS installation when you decide to retire that system to
> a secondary use (or sell it) and move all your stuff to a
> new computer. So unless you plan on throwing it away this
> new OS installation is something that had to be done anyway.

When he gets his pristine system up, the first thing he should
install is INCTRL5 from pcmag.com. This used to be free, but I
believe the rats (bean counters) got at that. At any rate that can
supervise any new installations and record the precise files
installed, erased, register entries made or altered, etc. This
will allow total extermination of a bad utility, leaving no tracks.

At the same time it is worth while making periodic backups of the
entire registry. You can then bodily return to any previous
state. If the backups are made by exporting, the resultant files
are text, and can be quickly searched in an editor. Searching in
regedit is abysmally slow. Then the pristine system backup can be
instantaneously updated to any of the backedup records by importing
that backup.

My experience is with W98, since I will not allow any of the later
versions on my systems, due primarily to that execresence of a
EULA.
--
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>