Drive upgrade advice please

[Gerald Bramwell]

Hi,

I am going to purchase a 250Gb SATA drive to use as my primary drive, I
have three 80Gb IDE drives and a DVD rewriter. I am proposing to do a
fresh install of Windows XP home SP2 as I think it has managed to pick
up a bit of garbage. Will I have to re authenticate Windows?

I realize that I will have to re-install most if not all of my programs
but all my data is already backed up. I have got a copy of Casper 4 so I
probably will make an image of the Windows partition when I have
everything installed again.

Any advice what to do or not to do?

Thanks
Gerald

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi,

I am going to purchase a 250Gb SATA drive to use as my primary drive, I
have three 80Gb IDE drives and a DVD rewriter. I am proposing to do a
fresh install of Windows XP home SP2 as I think it has managed to pick
up a bit of garbage.

You don't say what "a bit of garbage" is, but my view is that it is
almost always better and easier to troubleshoot the problems and fix
them rather than reinstall Windows.

Moreover, if you just reinstall without finding out what caused the
problem, you will likely repeat the behavior that caused it, and
quickly find yourself in the same situation.

Will I have to re authenticate Windows?

The term is "activate," not "authenticate." Yes, you will have to
reactivate, but that can normally be done over the internet and is as
quick and easy as it was the first time. Worst case, if it's been
fewer than 90 days since the last activation, you will have to do it
by a quick and easy voice phone call (you'll be prompted to do this
and given an 800 number) rather than over the internet.

I realize that I will have to re-install most if not all of my programs

Yes, but it's all, not "most if not all."

but all my data is already backed up.

Good.


I have got a copy of Casper 4 so I
probably will make an image of the Windows partition when I have
everything installed again.

Good, but it's usually not sufficient to do it once. The contents are
constantly changing, and most people should do this periodically.

 

[Andrew E.]

Forget the image software,perform a clean xp installation,& yes
reauthentication
is needed.

 

[Gerald Bramwell]

It's mostly left over files after removing programs plus a bit of
bloating, it is about 18 months since it was first installed. I don't
mind the time it would take, as I have another PC available, just
thought it might be better to start off with a blank sheet.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

It's mostly left over files after removing programs plus a bit of
bloating, it is about 18 months since it was first installed. I don't
mind the time it would take, as I have another PC available, just
thought it might be better to start off with a blank sheet.

I don't agree at all, but it's your choice. I won't try to convince
you otherwise.

 

[Poprivet`]

It's mostly left over files after removing programs
plus
a bit of bloating, it is about 18 months since it was
first installed. I don't mind the time it would take,
as
I have another PC available, just thought it might be
better to start off with a blank sheet.

Although I agree that Ken's advice is always
un-refutable, if you want more experience with
installing the OS and the simplest method, which is
often a lot faster than troubleshooting for newbies or
the inexperienced, then go ahead and do the reinstall.
Definitely make a new backup after it's running
right, WHILE it's running right, and before you restore
any data. And then another, after the full restore and
all updates are 100% complete.
Beware: Depending on when and how you make your
backups, the "sloppy" stuff might also be in your
current backup, so unless you're positive it's clean,
finish manually installing all your apps too.
If you have malware mixed in with your data, your
backup could also contain that too, which of course
would probably put you right back to where you were
too, so keep that in mind. The most likely place for
it to exist would be in an e-mail or an e-mail
attachment, IF you have malware problems; you haven't
given a lot of info here.
But if you do a backup as soon as you've got the OS
happy and working well, than at least you won't have to
do a complete install again unless you want to.
Haven't had to rebuild in a long time, but when I was
doign complete reinstalls, I made backups both before
and after my data was restored to the machine. That
way I had backups for a Clean System, Updated but with
no data restore yet, and fully restored system.
They're only "perfect" until you make some substantal
changes, but if you have confidence in them, you can
avoid having to do complete resintalls.

A "bloated" Registry is probably not a good reason to
reinstall, BTW. It's not very often the registry is
responsible for slowdowns, etc., if you're getting no
error messages during boots. But like I said, the
experience is good to have so if that's what you want,
go for it, IMO.

Just my 2 ¢,

Pop`