Diablo Multiplayer First Aid Version 1.2
Greg Legowski, gregleg@pobox.com

This program was written by a Windows developer (namely me) who lost one too 
many Diablo network characters to the great bit bucket in the sky.

Since I wrote this one, I have seen many others that also do the trick.  I 
decided to make mine publicly available anyway for the following reasons:

o  I backup the characters to a single file with all necessary data encoded.  
   You can safely copy and move this file elsewhere, without having to worry 
   about things such as timestamps or file attributes -- my program handles 
   these for you.  The program makes no assumptions about the location or even 
   name of the backup files, so you are free to make backups of this file, 
   rename it, basically do anything you want with it as long as the contents 
   are not modified.

o  It's the smallest such applet out there thus far (as an applet should 
   be ;-), and still has a reasonable Windows interface.

o  It will warn you when you are trying to restore your characters to a machine
   other than they originated on.
 
o  There is no need to restart the computer after performing a restore, UNLESS
   DiabAid has to rename the computer (new to version 1.2)


New to this version:
o  Optionally allow renaming of machine being restored to if differnet than
   being restored from (only use this if you're SURE you can change the name
   of the machine you're on!  For example if you're using this utility at home,
   and just reinstalled your operating system, it's probably safe to allow the
   machine renaming.)

o  Check if the target system OS is the same as the source backup (only works
   if the backup file was itself CREATED by version 1.2 or higher of DiabAid).


New to this version 1.1:
o  Fixed a bug that could result in a "successful" restore being corrupt if the
   number of characters already in Diablo is different than the number in the
   backup file.

o  Better error message for restoring to a machine that "appears" to be 
   different than the backup is from.

o  Command-line options:
   -b <filename>  Backs up characters to <filename>
   -r <filename>  Restores characters from <filename>


This utility is intended ONLY to safeguard your characters against system 
failure.  As such, it grabs ALL network characters at the time of the backup, 
so if you create new characters after this backup, and then restore from this 
backup, the "newer" characters will vanish.  Moral:  Always keep your backups 
current.

Use of this applet falls under "at your own risk".  I can NOT guarantee the 
results of using this applet, although I HAVE tested it (and NEEDED it ;-) 
with my own characters, on Windows 95 and Windows NT Workstation 4.0 (Service 
Pack 1) machines.


Thanks,
--Greg Legowski
gregleg@pobox.com
http://www.pobox.com/~gregleg
