Combine Your Rescue Disks on a Single CD

Many programs today recommend that users create a separate rescue disk--a bootable floppy to use in case of emergencies. Is there any way to put all of these onto one bootable CD?

Bill Snell, via the Internet

What a great idea! Yes, it's possible--at least most of the time. The instructions below may not work with every kind of rescue disk, however. And if your PC can't boot from a CD, just skip this tip.

To find out if it can, enter your CMOS setup program and look around. The method for entering the setup program varies from one computer to another, so I can't provide exact instructions. In most computers, pressing Delete or F2 soon after you turn on the computer--before it starts loading Windows--will bring up the setup menu. (When you first turn on your computer, there's usually a 5-second notice listing your machine's particular setup key.) Search the setup's various submenus until you find the boot-order option. Then see if booting from CD is one of the available selections.

To combine your rescue disks, you need a CD-R or CD-RW drive, and software for writing to it. I'll assume you have Roxio/Adaptec's Easy CD Creator program; it comes bundled with many CD-RW drives.

First, create the various rescue disks, if you haven't already done so. Once you've created these floppies, transfer each disk's contents to a separate folder on your hard drive. A number of programs, including Symantec's Norton AntiVirus, will let you create an emergency "disk" on your hard drive. If you find that option, use it.

You will definitely need a Windows start-up disk. Here's how to create one: Select Start, Settings, Control Panel and double-click the Add/Remove Programs icon. Click the Startup Disk tab, select Create Disk, and then follow the prompts. This procedure is an exception--copy the files to a floppy disk, not to your hard drive.

Once the programs are on your hard drive, test them. Put the Windows start-up disk in the floppy drive and select Start, Shut down, Restart. At the DOS prompt, use the Change Directory (cd) command to go to the folder for a program (for instance, to go to the c:\nav folder, type cd c:\nav and press Enter). Once inside the folder, type autoexec and press Enter to load that particular rescue program.

When you're satisfied that the disk works, create your CD. Back in Windows, put a blank CD-R or CD-RW disc into the drive. If this action doesn't launch Easy CD Creator, launch the program yourself; use the option to create a Data CD, not the option to use DirectCD.

When Easy CD Creator opens, select File, New CD Project, Bootable CD (see Figure 1). When prompted for a bootable floppy, insert the Windows start-up disk. Then drag the folders that contain your other rescue-disk files from the top pane of the CD Creator window (Explorer) to the bottom pane (CD Layout). Finally, click the Create CD icon.

When you boot from this CD, you'll find yourself at the DOS prompt in drive A:, a virtual floppy that functions the same as a regular Windows start-up disk. The other files from the CD-ROM are stored on the CD, which is probably one drive letter later than it would otherwise be (if your CD drive is usually D:, for instance, this time it will be E:). To get to it, type the drive letter followed by a colon and press Enter. Use the Directory (dir) command to see what folders are available; type dir /p to see just a screen at a time; and enter the cd command again to get to a particular folder. Once you reach a folder, type autoexec and press Enter.

Lincoln Spector

Send your questions to answer@pcworld.com. Answer Line pays $50 for published items. You'll find Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector's humorous writing at www.thelinkinspector.com.

Move Outlook Express Settings to a New PC

Is there a simple way for me to move my Outlook Express installation--messages, addresses, rules, signatures, and so on--to a new computer?

Bradford H. Turnow Hampton Bays, New York

For a company that gets a cut from nearly every PC sold, Microsoft seems absurdly uninterested in easing the job of moving your old PC's settings to a new computer. Your Outlook Express setup has four different pieces that you may want to move. I suggest that you transfer them in the order listed below.

Accounts: On your old computer, open Outlook Express, select Tools, Accounts, and under the Mail tab pick the account you want to transfer. Click the Export button, save the file to a floppy disk or other removable medium, and move it to the new computer. Select Tools, Accounts on the new computer, click the Import button, and double-click the file you exported.

Address Book: Like Accounts, Address Book contains an easy export/import feature, which you'll find on its File menu. But the feature doesn't work very well. If you use Address Book folders to organize your contacts, importing an address book will wipe out that organization.

Instead, copy the address book file from the old computer to the new one. Where Outlook Express keeps the address book and what it names the file vary from one PC to another. To find yours, select Start, Search, For Files or Folders (or Find, Files or Folders) and enter *.wab in the 'Search for files or folders named' (or Named) text box. If the search unearths just one, that's the one you want. If it finds more than one, you'll have to figure out which option is your address book. The correct file is likely named after you, with a designation such as 'Bradford.wab'. Double-click the file to read its contents, if you like.

After you have searched both of the PCs, copy the.wab file to either a removable or a network drive on the old computer, and then move it to the new PC. Give the file the same name as the new computer's existing.wab file, and place it in the same folder so that it replaces the.wab file used by your new computer's Outlook Express.

Rules, signatures, and other settings: This is by far the hardest part. On the old computer, select Start, Run, type regedit, and press Enter. Navigate the Registry Editor's left pane as if it were Windows Explorer until you find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities. Click the plus sign next to Identities to see one or more "keys" (the Registry term for folders), each identified with a long, bracketed string of letters and numbers. If there's only one key, you've found the one to use. If there are multiple keys, select each one and in the right pane examine the data it contains. The identity of the key that refers to you should be obvious.

In the correct identity's subkeys, go to and highlight Software\Microsoft\Outlook Express. Select Registry, Export Registry File. Save the file and move it to a temporary folder on the new computer.

Make sure Outlook Express is closed; then open three applications on your new computer's desktop: WordPad ( Start, Programs, Accessories, WordPad), the Registry Editor ( Start, Run, type regedit, and click OK), and Windows Explorer. Make sure Explorer is opened to the folder containing the.reg file that you just exported.

In the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities and click your identity's key in the left pane. In the right pane, double-click the UserID value to bring up the Edit String dialog box. With the 'Value data' field highlighted, press Ctrl-C to copy the identification string. Press Esc to close the dialog box (see Figure 2). Close the Registry Editor.

In Explorer, drag the.reg file to the WordPad window and drop it on the menus, not on the blank editing space. This will load the file into WordPad. Near the top of the file, you'll see a line that starts '[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Identities\', followed by the identity number from the old computer. Highlight that number, including the curly brackets that surround it, but don't highlight the backslashes that surround the brackets.

Select Edit, Replace. The identity number that you've just highlighted should now appear in the Replace dialog box's 'Find what' field. Next, move to the 'Replace with' field and press Ctrl-V to paste in the new computer's identity. Click Replace All, followed by File, Save, and then close WordPad. In Windows Explorer, double-click the file, and then click Yes.

Mailboxes: To move your Inbox, Sent Items, and any mailboxes you created yourself, simply move all of the files from their folder on the old PC to a folder on the new system. To find the location of that folder, open Outlook Express, select Tools, Options, click the Maintenance tab, and then click the Store Folder button. That method will work on both computers, but if you've brought over the rules, signatures, and other settings as described above, the files will be located in the same place on the new computer as on the old one. Exit Outlook Express on each computer before you begin copying the files.

Time-Stamp Your Notes

Notepad is fairly basic, but it can do some nice tricks that few people know about. For instance, you can use the program to keep time- and date-stamped notes, such as records of phone calls, and it will do the stamping for you. Create a file in Notepad that starts with the text string .LOG (yes, it must start with a period and be entirely uppercase). This must be the only text on the first line of the file. Now every time you load that file, Notepad will insert the time and date at the bottom of the text.