It's time to reinstall Windows. Things are flaky, the machine's crashing every once in a while ... I just know it's time. How do I do that and still preserve as much of what's set up on the machine already? How do I reinstall Windows without losing all my installed programs and data? There are definitely scenarios where a reinstallation of Windows is required. Be it simple "software rot" (the degradation of your system as you add, and remove, programs over time), or something more malicious like a virus or an accumulation of spyware. The first question isn't really "how?", it's "how much?" The first decision to make, really, is how much of a reinstallation you want to perform. Do you want to reinstall only Windows? Or perhaps the rest of the system as well? It sounds like a lot of work ... and it is. But in my experience a completely clean reinstallation of Windows and all applications is the only real way to ensure that the machine is truly and absolutely clean. It's a long process that begins with backing up all your data, and the installing Windows from scratch, including a reformat of the hard disk, and then reinstalling all of your applications and restoring your data. Did I mention it's a lot of work? "... in my experience a
completely clean reinstallation of Windows and all applications is the only
real way to ensure that the machine is truly and absolutely clean."
It's very close to what happens when you get a new machine. In fact, quite often, I'll time it so that it happens when I get a new machine. The new machine gets built out with all my applications and my data gets moved, and then I reformat and reinstall Windows on the old machine, but then use it for some other purpose. So what if you don't want to go through all that hassle? Then you want what's commonly called a "repair install". When you boot from the Windows Installation CD, it's one of the options along the way. It will reinstall Windows while preserving your applications and data. The "problem", if you want to call it that, with a repair installation, is that it does not fix nearly as many problems as a complete reinstall. If the problem is with an application, a repair install of only Windows may not fix the application's issues. Rather than reinvent the wheel here, I'll point you at a couple of very good resources out on the 'net.
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Article 9559 | Posted December 22, 2005 |
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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 PMcan i reinstall windows application with dos and how.
Posted by: michael at January 12, 2006 11:28 AMI 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.
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