Do what feels right

Everyone knows that if you have a problem with an installed program, you shouldn't get copies of the files from another working system and paste them over to try and fix it. "It can cause heaps of problems even if it's from the same OS version with the same patches and all."

However, I recently got a new pc and have been switching between booting off my old win98SE install and my new one. I'd had a problem in the old one of NAV not using the latest definitions, even when I manually installed them (they dissappeared from \Incoming, as they should have). When I got NAV installed on my new pc and working fine, I decided to bite the bullet and paste the files over. Result: Fixed every error :cool:

Next I had a problem with Tiny Personal Firewall. It worked fine on my old install, but wouldn't on my new one. In one go I removed and re-installed the TCP/IP&Dial-up Adapter&Client and pasted the working Tiny files over my dodgy install. Result: Fixed every error again, and even used all my old rules :rolleyes:

I'm just wondering how many other people have taken the more brute force method of copy-pasting files and had such success :D

Oh yeah, I do that all of the time. People 'round here tend to be fairly computer illiterate, and since I have seven computers in my house that are mine and they're each dual-booted with different OSs, I have all of the files that they could possibly need if their computer is messing up. So, for real, a lot of the time when they come here and they're like "my PC won't boot ahhh!" I just ask what OS they use, go to the computer that I have that works with that same (or similar) OS on it, copy most of the important files (himem, win.*, user.dat, autoexec.*, etc) onto some floppies, go through there using a boot floppy and just overwrite their existing files on there. 9 times out of 10 that makes the problem go away right there. :)