>HI! Love your books! Have read Upgrading & Repairing PCs, Upgrading and
Repairing Laptops, and now the one on Microsoft Windows
Thanks!
>Question: Why don't you mention the SFC utility in the book? I have always
found it to be a handy utility, and was surprised that it was only mentioned
in a list in the appendix.
SFC *can* be useful, but it is just an extension of WFP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/222193 which runs automatically in the
background. In otherwords, if a file is damaged or overwritten, WFP would
automatically replace it before you even had the chance to run SFC. I'll try
to include more information on both WFP and SFC in the next edition.
>Also, in the next edition could you please make the index a bit more
comprehensive? I know you only have room for so much, and I flag everything I
can, but it's an honest pain in the tukus to know you read how to do something
that you forgot to flag and then be unable to find it later. For instance, I
"know" I read about installing the Windows disc to the HDD first and running
the install from there to avoid having to hunt for the disc every time you
need something else or a service that wasn't originally installed, but for the
life of me I forgot to flag it and I am having a horrible time trying to
locate it.
I agree that a good index is important, we are always trying to make it
better with each new edition.
As for installing Windows from the hard drive:
With Win9x, you boot from a WinMe startup floppy, partition (FDISK) and
format the hard disk ("FORMAT C: /S" to make it bootable), then copy the
entire CD to the hard drive, reboot, and run SETUP from the root folder.
With WinXP, you can follow the same steps as well, however instead of running
SETUP, you would change to the i386 folder and run WINNT. Note that after the
installation completes you'll probably want to use the Convert command to
change the FAT32 volume to NTFS.
Alternatively, with WinXP I prefer to install from the CD, then after the
installation is complete, to insure the CD isn't required in the future for
adding or removing Windows components, I copy the i386 folder to the hard
drive, then run Regedit, navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup and change
both SourcePath and ServicePackSourcePath to C:\.
>But enough about that. Like I said, I love the books, have the one you wrote
for Que on data recovery in line in my reading pile, and am looking forward to
digging into that one as well.
That's an *old* one!
>Have you thought about writing one on the command line with little things you
can try to build up skills and experience? Don't know about the rest of the
world, but I would buy it.... And yes, I know there are books already out
there, but I like your "everything but the kitchen sink" comprehensiveness...
Have a nice day! Lynda Brewer
That does sound like an interesting idea, as I'm from an era where the
command line was all you had. <g> Thanks for your suggestions, Scott.
