reinstalling windows XP

L

littlesaj

Geek Trainee
I have got few glitcehs with windows XP on my system adn was thinking of reinstalling windows, but the problem is i do not want to lose my data, if i reinstall windows without formatting i know i wont lose data but any data that i have got will that be in teh same place as before? or will it all be in a section of windows that i will have to find and put it all back on my desktop adn reinstall all the programs?

any help would be appreciated
 
if i remember correctly, you dont have to format to re-install windows, you can leave the file structure untouched, so you don't have to lose your data.
 
The problem is the registry. Usually the registry is the first thing to get corrupted, and something like 95% of Windows software relies on registry entries. If you reinstall Windows over itself, it will wipe the registry and leave the filestructure (mostly). Therefore, you'll have a HDD full of wrecked software.
 
do you mean the filestructure in the /windows folder, or throughout the whole drive? and you could just go and delete the few programs that you dont want right?
 
StimpE said:
do you mean the filestructure in the /windows folder, or throughout the whole drive? and you could just go and delete the few programs that you dont want right?
Click to expand...
You're missing the point. Without the registry, most programs don't work anyway, so whether or not the software is still on the hard drive is moot. The only viable solution is to back up your data (not programs) and reinstall from scratch. This is one of the reasons I no longer use the Windows operating system myself.

-AT
 
Another thing that can be very nice (besides backing up) is the use of partitions. Yeah, you still need to reinstall programs, BUT, you can transfer all the important stuff over to another paritition, format C: (or whatever drive letter the name is), install Windows, and then transfer stuff back over easily. Of course, if the whole hard drive goes, this doesn't quite work out that well, but still, I think you get the point.
 
As far as I know, you can simply reinstall Windows on top of the existing installation without losing anything at all. First of all, Windows is not going to touch your data at all. Secondly, once you finish re-installation, you'll find all you programs, shortcuts, desktop items and settings as they were before. Well, if not all, at least most of them. I have reinstalled WinXp over my existing installation umpteen number of times without any problems.
And of course, as BigB suggested, the best strategy is to have multiple partitions and assign them specific tasks eg. I keep C:\ for the OS, namely barebones Windows98, d:\ for a second OS, namely WinXP and applications, e:\ for data, f:\ for multimedia (video) and g:\ for multimedia (Audio). This way it is easy to backup any partition when required. You may ask why Win98? Believe me, it does help at times to tinker around with Win89 when WinXP crashes. Also, as far as I know, the only way to create a full bootable system floppy disk is through Win98. The outdated floppy disk does come to our rescue at times when all else fails.
Hope this will help solve your problem. Keep posting.
Best of luck.
Chinmoy
 
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