Make an image of your Win9x installation and write that back when you are done?

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

Make an image of your Win9x installation and write that back when you are done?

That's what I'm doing ATM. It takes a looooong time.

I doubt any of the software virtualization suits support 9x, so what you'll probably have to do is use those utilities that monitor file/registry access for you.

Another option is to use Vmware/VirtualBox/VPC to create a snapshot before installing software and the roll back. You won't be able to test your hardware in a VM though.

It takes less time if you use a smaller harddisk or partition.

h-a-l-9000 wrote:

It takes less time if you use a smaller harddisk or partition.

That's a good point. 😀

Norton Ghost restores amazingly fast IMHO. It has its own smartdrive system. The partition size does not matter on itself, it is the amount of used space on the partition that matters.

You can't just remove the device and kill the associated INF files?

I like BartPE + Driveimage XML. I haven't tried it with 9x though. Seems like it should work....

What I usually do in these situations on a Win 9x system is to enter safe mode, remove the software and drivers the usual way, then delete all the traces of a driver from the driver manager. After that, running "regedit" and manually search'n'destroy everything thats driver's company related. Of course, its neither fast, nor safe, nor 100% clear afterwards but at least its more or less satisfying.

However, there might be a way to get rid of all the drivers. Make a backup copy of window\system and system32 directories without any special drivers. Then, if things get nasty - delete the current system and system32 directories and replace them with the backups. Never tried it though... 😀

backing up the registry would probably be your best bet

Maybe try Quarterdeck Cleansweep.

@everyone, thanks very much for all the suggestions (in this thread and others), much appreciated. 😀