Your Own Windows Laboratory

Windows applications and device drivers are notoriously unruly. When you install them, they do all sorts of sneaky, underhanded tricks. They rewrite parts of your Registry, refuse to confine themselves to their own folders, drop new DLLs in the Windows and System folders, and sometimes even overwrite critical system DLLs. Windows 98 prevents some of these shenanigans, but it doesn't catch everything, and Windows 95 is oblivious to most of this nastiness. The simple fact is, whenever you install new software and hardware or just fine-tune existing settings, you risk rendering your system useless. How can you try anything new when you know it could leave your work environment unusable?

One solution is provided by GoBack, a new utility from Wild File. GoBack is unlike other system-recovery utilities: It actually tracks every change that occurs on your hard drive, and lets you take your drive "back in time" if disaster strikes. It can bring back deleted files and restore previous versions of altered files (including the Registry). It even works when things are so bad that your machine won't boot. For more on how GoBack works (and certain cases in which it won't work), see "GoBack: It's About Time."

Another approach is to create a second Windows environment where you can experiment with reckless abandon--a safe Windows laboratory that you can restore to its original state in a matter of minutes. I'll show you how to create, use, and restore such an installation of Windows 95 or 98. This technique leaves you with your trusty working environment intact, plus you get a worry-free test environment where you can compute with impunity.

You'll need your Windows 95 or 98 CD-ROM, a few hundred megabytes of hard drive space, PowerQuest's PartitionMagic ($69.95 list), and either PowerQuest's DriveImage ($69.95 list) or Symantec's Ghost (no retail price--site licensing only).

These instructions assume that your computer has one physical hard drive with a single partition, C:. Before you get started, be sure to back up any essential data to removable media; we're going to be messing with partitions, and it's possible that something will go wrong. You'll be glad you took this precautionary step should the unthinkable happen.