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- ChangeIt: Do you need it?
-
- Here's the situation: (Take your pick...)
-
- a. You've just added a second hard drive, and you want to change your
- Windows installation from Drive C: to Drive D:...or,
-
- b. You've replaced your Drive C: with a far larger drive, and you want
- additional partitions (again, moving Windows to some other drive
- letter)...or,
-
- c. Doublespace, or Stacker, or one of the other disk compression utilities
- has fiddled with your drive letters, leaving your Windows files stranded on
- a drive different from where they were initially installed.
-
- In situations a. and b., if is fairly easy to physically move the files.
- As example, if you've kept your Win installation all under a C:\WINDOWS
- subdirectory, XCOPY can do it for you --
-
- XCOPY C:\WINDOWS\*.* D:\WINDOWS\*.* /S/E
-
- In situation c., you may have a real nightmare on your hands without
- hard-nosed detective work to straighten out your PATH and a lot of other
- drive references.
-
- In each case, you will be left with laborious reworking of all your .GRP
- files, many of your .INI files, and some of your .PIF files, to inform
- Windows Program Manager where the files are now located. That means using
- "Change Properties" from Program Manager for .GRPs, editing the .INI files
- with a text processor, and redoing .PIF files with the .PIF editor.
-
- In each case, ChangeIt can help you. ChangeIt WON'T do everything for you;
- there are simply too many possibilities.
-
- ChangeIt will look at any .GRP, .INI, or .PIF file and change all
- references to a given drive letter to a different drive letter. For .GRP
- files, it will re-calculate the file's internal checksum so that the new
- .GRP file will be acceptable to Program Manager. And, it preserves the
- original file with a .CHG file extension, in case your file-moving hits
- problems.
-
- ChangeIt will NOT accept wildcards, and will operate on only one file at a
- time -- each change should be tested, prior to making another one.
-
- ChangeIt does NOT move files, or copy them -- again, there are too many
- possibilities of how you want your Win system arranged.
-
- ChangeIt will NOT search your drive for files; it must be used from within
- the directory where the target file resides. (Ever seen a system with 3 --
- count 'em -- MAIN.GRPs? I have. No, I don't know it got that way.)
-
- ChangeIt will NOT deal with file references maintained separately by
- various Windows software packages (as example, Word for Windows .DOT
- files); again, there are too many possibilities.
-
- If only one-third of these comments have been relevant to you, then I urge
- you to ignore ChangeIt.
-
- For the proper syntax, simply type ChangeIt at the DOS prompt.
-
- ChangeIt is freeware (i.e., you pay nothing for it), and all usage by any
- user is at that user's sole risk. No user support is provided by the
- author.
-
- Thom Foulks
- Colorado Springs, CO
- July 1993