I just wanted to add a few comments to some posts before I ask my
question.

       AIDA32 is a great free utility for getting all sorts of information
about your hardware and software. Another good free utility is Fresh
Diagnose. Either one of these will display information about motherboards.

       From what I understand, SMART for HDD is usually enabled in the BIOS
and must be constantly running in the background for it to be effective. It
will inform you of potential failures, but ScanDisc will also alert you if
there are any disc problems if you run it regularly. In either case it's
always good to regularly back up your critical information on a regular basis
just in case the worst does happen.

       Now for my question. I've downloaded most of Microsofts' Critical
Updates for my WIN98SE OS but I will be reformatting the HDD soon and was
wondering if I copy the contents of my current Windows folder to disc, will
it include all of the updates applied? I know that there is an option to
download the updates and save them to disc, but as I have already gone
through that grueling process with a pokey dial-up modem, I was hoping to
find an easier way. It literally took me days to complete the download/reboot
process as some of the updates need to be installed separately from one
another. Any thoughts out there on this?

Chris Ryan
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