Time for housework

[bomberesque]

Right, My PC hasn't had an OS re-install for ... ooooh, ages. Last time it was because the harddrive went bang and so it was done by Dell tech support (yes, yes, I know)

so, here's the thing. I want to re-install the OS (at least I think I do, it's been a couple of years and she's acting all cranky) are there any tips that you have for stuff to look out for?

eg;

- backup my documents
- make sure you have drivers for any kit you have installed since you bought the computer (or is there a way around this?)

blah blah blah etc etc

any advice will be gratefully received

[deject]

just make sure you have all your drivers handy.

do you have one hard drive or two?

[bomberesque]

one drive

I suppose that the recovery disc has the base drivers that came with the PC, since then I have added generic USB2 and firewire cards and then a new gfx that I have the driver for

I have an external NAS drive aswell

[cheeseandham]

If you have the space, make an image of your current drive before starting afresh, as there's always something missed or forgotten or if it all goes horribly wrong.
Acronis Trueimage is my favorite as it allows you to recover files from the image file without restoring it, as well as a host of really cool features.
Otherwise most things are in your profile in c:/my documents and settings, and using Windows FASTWIZ (Files and Settings Transfer Wizard) can be your friend for moving your -erm- files and settings, and you can be selective about the settings taken and so leave the crud behind. Or start from scratch and make sure you leave all the crud behind.

Also if you use an image program like Trueimage you can save an image of your drive with everything set up and sweet (including games, if you wish) and the you don't have to totally reinstall again , you similar image back to this 'baseline' image.

[Fear]

If you use outlook make sure you have a copy of the pst file. It isn't in a nice place and people often forget about it.

[Woo Elephant Yeah]

Oh yeah, and game saves is one I always forget as well

[FatherJack]

I'm doing a move soon and am uninstalling all the games I'm not currently playing. That way it's usually only the saves left. Some do get deleted, but for the ones I'm bothered about I check more carefully.

Since I keep stuff separately, it's easier. I routinely do a full backup of C (OS), D (apps), G (data), H (downloads), I (setup) and from E (FPS games) and F (other games) I take Gameshadow, XFire and the EA Downloader files. After uninstalling all games I'll do a full backup of those too. J (korn) and Z (backup/torrents) are already on external drives.

Recovery will mean installing games and apps to new box as I use them to prevent clutter by reinstalling stuff I never used much, but all the patches are recoverable from EA, Gameshadow, XFire and H, and any mail or work-related data is either synched over iFolder or accessed via RPC over HTTP in Outlook.

Don't forget your fonts, and have a look through your saved passwords in your browser - if there are any you have no idea about, change them now while you still can.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

mozbackup is fucking handy for firefox/thunderbird etc.

sometimes breaks extensions, but keeps bookmarks, weirdy settings, passwords etc. and most handily for thunderbird, all of your emails (last time i forgot to backup thunderbird i was getting emails for 4 days)

[friznit]

It's an old habit, but I always make a boot disk before reinstalling/reformatting, include cd rom drivers and relevant RAID/SATA drivers which windoze can be a bit faaabulous about on installing. Also, interwebs settings if you have speshul IPs / WEP keys / Pwds etc. If things go wrong you can often escape early death by jumping on t'internet and doing a google search for ' omg panic!'

[cheeseandham]

If things go wrong you can often escape early death by jumping on t'internet and doing a google search for ' omg panic!'

Do a sweep for a pre-made BartPE LiveCD. In fact everyone should have one of these ready for when they have an emergency. (a swept one should have all the plugins pre-installed and saves you the hassle of making it yourself)
That's why I recommend a Acronis/Ghost image though, it can also back-track you totally if things go tits up, as well keep your last copy of your whole disk, including Mozilla, Outlook, save games and drivers et al. (all drivers are stored around windows/inf and windows/system32 95% of the time you can literally do a "Add new hardware" and point to this location.

Friznit makes a very good point though, the most important thing is your RAID/SATA drivers on a floppy (if Windows doesn't recognise your drives automatically and you need to F6 it at Windows install time).

[FatherJack]

Another thing sometimes forgot is network card drivers, if you have gigabit or something else not recognised by a base windows install. Have them on a CD or memory stick, ie: not only on the internet.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Friznit makes a very good point though, the most important thing is your RAID/SATA drivers on a floppy (if Windows doesn't recognise your drives automatically and you need to F6 it at Windows install time).

That

Is why nlite and http://driverpacks.net exists.

I generally use the mass-storage and network driverpacks. It's not 100% foolproof once sorted, but fairly close.

[cheeseandham]

Thank you for those Berk.
Thisand this also should fit the bill for afterwards too if you're doing that.

[Woo Elephant Yeah]

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/down ... 211373.php

That looks handy, I might test it for use in work actually