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Another option is a disk image backup.

Programs such as Ghost, True Image, Drive Image and many others make "image" backups of an entire hard disk. Doing this every month or two provides a recent synch point (so to speak) that you can fall back to when your computer starts acting up. Restoring an "image" backup is much faster and easier than re-installing Windows and your applications.

The down side is that the software costs money, and it takes time, effort and a lot of storage space for the backups.

Also, a restore will wipe out all your data files so you either have to (a) be diligent about backing up your important files or (b) keep your data files in a separate partition from Windows and your applications.

Posted by: michael horowitz at December 22, 2005 6:20 PM

can i reinstall windows application with dos and how.

Posted by: michael at January 12, 2006 11:28 AM

I have a partitioned drive. Windows 98 is on C and Windows 2000 is on D. I used an old version of Partition Magic (on C) to partition. I can not even boot up on 98 anymore (for a long time), and Partition Magic will not start even by clicking the exe. program under 98 on C. If I do an image copy of D on another drive, reformat main drive to D and then copy image back to it, will it work as if partition was never there, or will things have been left on C that I must have for D to work by itself? I want to do a repair install on D for Windows 2000, but want to get rid of partition and reformat first and have no logical C drive since I have been using D for years anyway. D, now, must be using drivers from C for original equipment like sound card (?), or did the installation of 2000 on D move all of those drivers over on installation? Advise, please. Thanks for all your help and site. I am 72 on fixed income or would buy you a latte.

Unfortunately there's no way that I know of to reliable run a program installed on one partition in another OS (like Win98), using an OS installed on another partition. The problem is that when programs install themselves they often install additional information in the registry that is kept with the OS. Thus even if you were able to start the program while booted in Win XP, the registry information that it had installed isn't accessible.

When you install an OS, drivers are not "moved", unless perhaps you install "on top of" the old version, on the same drive. Sounds like you did not do that, so whatever was installed was new at the time of installation.

Really, the best advice I have for you is to back up everything, and then reformat and reinstall everything from scratch the way you want it.

-Leo

Posted by: Richard Harper at August 14, 2008 11:44 AM

i installed extra memory on my pc running ME after doing this I have beeunable to start my pc it starts to boot then eventually comes up with no fixed drives found and then freezes with this message how do i reinstall windows on this machine

Posted by: john ball at October 11, 2008 8:02 PM

michael horowitz wrote:
" Programs such as Ghost, True Image, Drive Image and many others make "image" backups of an entire hard disk. Doing this every month or two provides a recent synch point (so to speak) that you can fall back to when your computer starts acting up. Restoring an "image" backup is much faster and easier than re-installing Windows and your applications.

The down side is that the software costs money, and it takes time, effort and a lot of storage space for the backups. "

I don't mean to insult the Poster but we do have an option for almost everything in Linux. Just if you are willing to experiment & give it a little time. Of course, you are saving money, right!

See below-

http://ping.windowsdream.com/

A linux flavor of copying partitions on the fly. Its free Pal.

Ravi.

Posted by: Ravi Agrawal at December 23, 2008 11:17 PM

what if once i reinstall windows and it shows the lsass error? what should i do then?

Posted by: Patrick Villaroya at January 16, 2009 11:17 PM

I have a Windows Xp Pro and I started up my PC this morning and it started up normally but then it said file is missing or corrupted. It says that I need to repair it. I dont have the CD anymore to repair it. Also there are alot of data that I dont want to loose. please help me

Posted by: Ravneel Prasad at August 13, 2009 1:49 PM

Can an OS like Windows XP be reinstall directly from the disc image of the original completed installation?

Depends on what you mean.

Can you use an installed copy of Windows on one machine to install Windows on another? No.

Can you use a backup image made of one machine to restore back to that same machine? Absolutely. That's what backup images are for.

Can you use a backup image made of one machine to restore back to a different machine? Typically not.
Leo
04-May-2010

Posted by: ambar celona at May 3, 2010 10:19 PM

OMG I thought it was gone. I was crying and everything. Thank God that I found this info.page from you it brought it back. Wow your amazing. Bless you! :o)

Posted by: cathy at May 23, 2010 2:25 AM

My son reinstalled his windows 7 program because the original program completely shut down with all his data. Once he reinstallwd the program it asked for owner name and password. He does not know it. Is the comp. garbage now. He is lost. Please help.

Computer is not garbage, no. This is simply a software problem, the computer itself is fine. If he's setting up a computer when it asks for username and password it's asking you to create a new user name and password. Then, later, to login to the new install of WIndows you would use that username and password that you specified at install time.
Leo
28-Jan-2012
Posted by: Diane Angel at January 23, 2012 5:26 PM
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