[Sussex] Elderly Aunts with computer problems (windows ones :-( )

[Geoffrey J. Teale]

"John D." <john at johnsemail.eclipse.co.uk> writes:

> My Aunt has an aging computer (from Evesham). She decided that she
> wanted a DVDRW fitted - this was done by her local shop.
>
> Somewhere along the line, shes lost some .dll files and has been
> recommended to re-install (W98SE). The missing file (the main one
> apparently) is the mscoree.dll, which, as far as I can tell is something
> to do with the .Net framework I haven't managed to work out why that
> might cause dvd burning problems (she didn't say what the other missing
> files were, as she thinks she knows what they are). Shes not confident
> to do a re-install herself, and lucky me, has been enlisted to
> assist.


The DVD writing software may well be written in a .NET language.  The
mscoree.dll is indeed part of .NET..

> Shes not really worried about any of the files etc that shes produced,
> and seems to have a couple of cruzer sandisk 128 meg key drives to put
> her most precious photos (she likes digital photography/image editing)
> on.
>
> My real question, is that if I do the re-install, but prior to that, I
> shrink the file system with partition magic and then make a seperate
> partition for her data "a la linux" like a seperate /home, does that
> logic still hold for windows systems, if she were to have any other
> problems like this? (perhaps I should have just said "is there any point
> in having a seperate data partition).

Yes this will work, you can keep that as a separate mount point "D:\"
(or whatever) and be careful to retain it between rebuilds. 

> Oh and for info, her local computer shop seem to think that the a
> re-install should cure the problem(s), though I suspect that there could
> be an issue about any missing patches etc that where produced by MS over
> the years before they stopped supporting W98 - I suppose that they might
> have them in their archives.

Yes.  Also the computer shop may just be saying rebuild it because
they say that whenever there's a problem.  

> Also, as this main missing .dll is .Net framework related, would it
> perhaps be better to just try and download and install the .Net stuff?
> She uses dialup, I'm thinking that it might be less hassle to try that
> as even though it's 20 + megs and would take a while, it'd be safer to
> try that ??

Hmm,  if the software needs the framework it should be installing the
dependencies of telling you to do so.

.NET applications come as assemblies that actually know what they
depend on (in terms of .Net Libraries) - you should get sensible
messages that tell you what's missing if anything.

> Could anyone advise me on this ??
----%<--------

Obviously I will just finish by saying - hey, isn't time your aunt
tried Linux?

-- 
Geoff Teale
CMed Technology            -   gteale at cmedresearch.com
Free Software Foundation   -   tealeg at member.fsf.org