I am trying to transfer my dad's old Win98 drive to a computer I built for him. He doesn't want to use a fresh install of Windows 98 which would make my job easier as a lot of the programs he has accumulated he doesn't have the install programs any longer and doesn't want to lose anything. Well I copied the boot partition in one of the hard drive manufacturers programs for disk to disk copying (Seagate, Western Digital, and Maxtor all at different times with different results), and while it did work it seems like there were a few files that couldn't be copied, but it said it shouldn't be a problem as windows would replace them once booted. Well the drive boots in the new computer but I noticed it hangs a bit searching for the old sound card of the old computer even though I uninstalled the sound card (well there wasn;t a listing to uninstall in add/remove programs, just an application in the C:drive called Maestro.exe). There are a few glitches like that even though I installed all the motherboard specific drivers for the new computer. The sounds work ok on the new PC, but for some reason video played is erratic and usually with no audio, and the codecs were all installed. Just seems like there was some corruption even before I copied the drive. Maybe the best question might be how can I copy programs from one drive to another without the setup programs that way I can start from a fresh copy of Win98 so at least I know things are stable? Thanks.

The short answer is that you probably can't. You may be able to get Windows98 to configure all the new hardware though. As far as using software to clone a partitiion is concerned, you CAN't use software designed for one brand on another. Your problem is that your Win98 installation was for different hardware than the old computer.

My hard drive and 98 installation has now been instaled in 3 different ,otherboard/processor and other hardware change configurations without a reinstall. Normally I would use install the new hard drive as a slave, boot from a dos boot disk with ghost on it and then do an f8 boot into dos (option 5 as i recall on the boot menu) use ghost to copy the drive, as its in dos it will copy all windows files as they will not be in use. Bear in mind that you may not have access to a cd rom untill the new motherboard drivers have been installed, though this used to only happen to me on 95 based systems. 98 is usually pretty good at sorting itself out, though it helps to install as little of the new hardware as possible to begin with, ie just have the graphic card leave out the sound and network cards andf any other devices such as usb hard drives and printers etc until 98 is fully up and running. Then install them 1 at a time. HTH Woof Always proof-read carefully to see if you any words out.

OntheHill I know you can't use Seagates utilities, on transferring a WD drive to a Maxtor that should have been obvious. (or any other manufacturers utilities without there being at least one HD of that brands software being used) But I had to copy this particular drive twice as I wasn't just going to pull the drive and stick it in the new PC without a backup. That was why I had to use different back-up progs as I had to shuffle around a few of my own HD's to make this happen. Woof so Ghost is the only way huh? I don't have Ghost, and I don't care for programs you need to keep permanantly installed on a HD which reminds me of the disasters I've had with Partition Magic 8.0 back in the day...

You don't have to keep Ghost installed. All you need is the Ghost CD or floppies (depending upon the Ghost version). If you can get hold of Drive Image (it was bought out by Symantec and turned into the newer Ghost), you could also use it. It's my favorite. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

Well I ran Registry Mechanic and one I just bought that I forget the name of, and it found a bunch of stuff, but still the start up still looks for Maestro. It says: c:\>c:\Maestro.com BAD COMMAND NAME This was removed within windows by just deleting it from the C:drive. It never appeared in the device manager or add/remove programs, or in program files under the ESS brand name. I did a search with the find for Maestro*.* and it found 2 other places but one was in the Windows\System folder same file Maestro app (I assume it was .exe), and the same file in a CAB file within Windows. I deleted them both and the same result. Other than the annoyance of seeing it hesitate upon rebooting every time and the brief hiccup of the sound when the Windows Theme starts, the sound from the new PC's integrated sound from the ASUS board works well and no problems. I would like to get rid of the annoyance though. Where to look in the registry (I have spent some time looking through entries and no go...)? Thanks.

Run sysedit and look for maestro in autoexec.bat and/or config.sys. Type "rem" in front of each line with reference to that file. Save and reboot. Another method is to run msconfig and remove check mark in front of the line referencing maestro.