Reinstalling Windows - will this work?

[beet1e]

Someone I know has a PC with Windows 98FE on it. The company that sold the system, Time Computing (or something like that) has also put their flavour of the OS in place, and there are all sorts of useless links and facilities that the owner would like to lose. She has now got an installation CD for W98SE. (I don't know her well enough to offer her any pirate copies of anything) My question is: If I install W98SE, will that clear the references to these third party OS flavourings? Might there still be registry entries and/or programs that would need to be removed?

[AKWarp]

That might work, but I think it probably won't.  Best bet is to back up all the files and do a fresh install on a reformatted hard drive.

Make sure you have all the proper drivers available for the hardware.

[CavemanJ]

If ya can't format the hdd for whatever reason (no media to back up everything else, whatever), use deltree c:\windows from dos and wipe out the windows folder, then go for the install.

[tomato]

Originally posted by beet1e
If I install W98SE, will that clear the references to these third party OS flavourings? Might there still be registry entries and/or programs that would need to be removed?

If there's enough disk space, I'd partition the drive, and install fresh on the new partition, leaving everything intact on the old.  That way she can copy over data files at her leisure.  The number of times I've forgotton that certain programs have data files before a format ... aarrg ...  

She can then use the new partition as a data drive - (e.g., for My Documents)

Tomato  (aka coconut)