Heres how to speed up the process of doing a "Full Installation".

[Don J]

I am having problems with with my PC. The result is that I perform frequent
reinstallations of Windows. It is cheaper than buying a new PC.

Doing an "Upgrade" installation is quick and easy. When followed by a few
minutes to do all the things necessary after Windows installs, it is the way
to go. If an "Upgrade" install doesn't do it, it is necessary to do a "Full
Installation". This can be disasterous because of all the work it destroys.
It used to take me several days to to do a "Full Installatation" of Windows.
I've now got the process of doing a "Full Installation", including
reinstalling applications, downloading Windows updates, and recovering lost
information down to less than three hours.

Once Windows is installed, the secret to rapid use of "Full Installation",
for reinstallation the next time around, is to install things like edited
documents and source documents, on different partitions than the location of
the then current windows installation. If Windows is installed on drive C:,
and drive D: is selected as the alternate partition, then all documents that
should not be trashed during the next "Full Installation" should be
installed on Drive D:.

Examples of information that should be installed on drive D:

1) All human operator generated source documents.

2) The holding directory for the email programs. In Outlook
Express this directory may be relocated by going to
"Tools>Options>Maintenance>Store Folder".

3) The "Favorites" list. To change this go to
"My Computer>Special Folders" in TweakUI.

4) Data files, for all programs that change their data files as
you work. For example, on installation both Quicken and
Turbotax place their data files in the Windows directory
and therefore in the Windows partition. Both can be
changed from the Files menu.

In addition to this, I have stored copies of all of my application source
CDs in separate subdirectories on drive E:. To reinstall my application
programs I therefore go to Drive E: and separately install each and every
one. This can take several hours. To speed things up I don't wait for the
current installation to complete before starting the next. I generally have
two or three installations going simultaneously.

I generally do all application installations in parallel with downloading
upgrades for Windows. For this purpose click the "Window Update" icon at
the top of the start menu. And if the system finishes one download or
installation before the others, remember to wait for the others to finish
before clicking the restart button.

Don J

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Holz]

The result is that I perform frequent
reinstallations of Windows

What is this crap? Is this for real?

 

[Don J]

It isn't crap! When Windows doesn't work anymore you have got to reinstall.

How would you handle it? I suppose you are rich enough that you would buy a
new PC.

Don J

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[R. McCarty]

I understand that lots of users like that "Fresh/Clean" install feel.
However, it's really unnecessary. All it takes is an imaging app
with images taken at a few steps in the original XP setup and
customization phases.

It also helps to understand that XP is a platform for other apps
and hardware. Of course it runs real smooth when 1st installed.
Sluggishness and poor performance is more the fault of drivers &
badly coded 3rd-Party apps than XP itself.

Full reinstall is enjoyable the first 25 times you do it. After that an
image you can lay down in 6-minutes starts to look real good.

It isn't crap! When Windows doesn't work anymore you have got to
reinstall.

How would you handle it? I suppose you are rich enough that you would buy
a new PC.

Don J

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Bill Sharpe]

I am having problems with with my PC. The result is that I perform frequent
reinstallations of Windows. It is cheaper than buying a new PC.

Doing an "Upgrade" installation is quick and easy. When followed by a few
minutes to do all the things necessary after Windows installs, it is the way
to go. If an "Upgrade" install doesn't do it, it is necessary to do a "Full
Installation". This can be disasterous because of all the work it destroys.
It used to take me several days to to do a "Full Installatation" of Windows.
I've now got the process of doing a "Full Installation", including
reinstalling applications, downloading Windows updates, and recovering lost
information down to less than three hours.

Once Windows is installed, the secret to rapid use of "Full Installation",
for reinstallation the next time around, is to install things like edited
documents and source documents, on different partitions than the location of
the then current windows installation. If Windows is installed on drive C:,
and drive D: is selected as the alternate partition, then all documents that
should not be trashed during the next "Full Installation" should be
installed on Drive D:.

Examples of information that should be installed on drive D:

1) All human operator generated source documents.

2) The holding directory for the email programs. In Outlook
Express this directory may be relocated by going to
"Tools>Options>Maintenance>Store Folder".

3) The "Favorites" list. To change this go to
"My Computer>Special Folders" in TweakUI.

4) Data files, for all programs that change their data files as
you work. For example, on installation both Quicken and
Turbotax place their data files in the Windows directory
and therefore in the Windows partition. Both can be
changed from the Files menu.

In addition to this, I have stored copies of all of my application source
CDs in separate subdirectories on drive E:. To reinstall my application
programs I therefore go to Drive E: and separately install each and every
one. This can take several hours. To speed things up I don't wait for the
current installation to complete before starting the next. I generally have
two or three installations going simultaneously.

I generally do all application installations in parallel with downloading
upgrades for Windows. For this purpose click the "Window Update" icon at
the top of the start menu. And if the system finishes one download or
installation before the others, remember to wait for the others to finish
before clicking the restart button.

Don J

I appreciate your telling us how you have streamlined a full
installation of Windows down to three hours. What I don't understand is
why you have to do this frequently. I've done it once in 18 months on my
desktop computer as a result of operator error (me!) and not at all on
my three-year-old laptop. System Restore is your friend! Acronis True
Image Backup (or some alternate backup program) is your friend.

Of course a full re-installation is cheaper than buying a new machine.
But I think you need to investigate what problems you are having in
order to take such drastic action so frequently.

Bill

 

[Don J]

I assume and believe that there is a hardware problem with my machine. I've
had it in a shop, they say that there is nothing wrong. The machine will
run fine for awhile. Then it will start doing something that makes it
impossible to use. I will start by using the "Upgrade" re-installation
option. When this doesn't work I will move on to "New Installation".

What else could it be? I would appreciate your suggesttions.

Don J

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

It isn't crap! When Windows doesn't work anymore you have got to reinstall.

How would you handle it? I suppose you are rich enough that you would buy a
new PC.

I'm not Holz, but the way I handle it is by using a little care in how
my computer is maintained. I have used Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98,
2000, XP, and Vista--most of them on two or three machines here--and
all from the around the day they were introduced until the day they
were upgraded to the next version. I have *never* had to reinstall any
version of Windows

The idea that Windows needs to be reinstalled periodically is a myth.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[R. McCarty]

"Doing Something" - can you explain that in more detail. Does it BSOD
or start faulting where you see the "Needs to Close" message ? For it to
be a hardware issue it would have to be something like a Track run on a
peripheral card or motherboard that opens when heated. Things don't
just run fine at a fresh install and then degrade after ___ amount of time.
Maybe it's a common event where a certain combination of programs at
a certain revision level don't play well together. Have you run any Memory
and Disk diagnostics on the PC ? Are all your device drivers and prgms
fully updated/patched ?

 

[Rock]

Why reinstall so frequently? This particular installation has been going
for almost five years without a reinstall. I do use a drive imaging program
to regularly image the system. The couple of times there was a problem of
significance, instead of spending inordinate amounts of time trying to
resolve it, restoring a previous image got the system back to the previous
running state in much less than an hour.

I strongly disagree with some of your advice, specifically running multiple
simultaneous installs, and in particular doing so while updating from
windows update. Maybe one reason the system has so many problems is how you
do these installations.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

I assume and believe that there is a hardware problem with my machine. I've
had it in a shop, they say that there is nothing wrong. The machine will
run fine for awhile. Then it will start doing something that makes it
impossible to use. I will start by using the "Upgrade" re-installation
option. When this doesn't work I will move on to "New Installation".

What else could it be? I would appreciate your suggesttions.

What is the exact nature of the problems you're experiencing. It very
well could be a hardware issue, but we can't begin to narrow it down
without more information.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Don J]

Unfortuately I don't remember why I had to reinstall this last time. But
the misbehavior was dramatic and affected all of my applications. I
couldn't get onto the newsgroups. I tried everything I could think of
before reinstalling. Doing an "Upgrade" install didn't change a thing. So
I moved onto "New Installation". What are your thoughts?

The next time it happens I shall attempt to post a message here, hopefully
before I have no other choice but to reinstall.

Don J

---------------------------------------------------------------

It isn't crap! When Windows doesn't work anymore you have got to
reinstall.

How would you handle it? I suppose you are rich enough that you would buy
a
new PC.

I'm not Holz, but the way I handle it is by using a little care in how
my computer is maintained. I have used Windows 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98,
2000, XP, and Vista--most of them on two or three machines here--and
all from the around the day they were introduced until the day they
were upgraded to the next version. I have *never* had to reinstall any
version of Windows

The idea that Windows needs to be reinstalled periodically is a myth.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I assume and believe that there is a hardware problem with my machine. I've
had it in a shop, they say that there is nothing wrong. The machine will
run fine for awhile. Then it will start doing something that makes it
impossible to use.

It's very hard to diagnose a problem if the only information you
provide is "doing something that makes it impossible to use." Please
be *much* more specific.

 

[Don J]

What is the drive imaging progream you use? How do I get it?

Don J

------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Unfortuately I don't remember why I had to reinstall this last time. But
the misbehavior was dramatic and affected all of my applications. I
couldn't get onto the newsgroups. I tried everything I could think of
before reinstalling. Doing an "Upgrade" install didn't change a thing. So
I moved onto "New Installation". What are your thoughts?

Well, it's difficult to have specific thoughts if you can't remember
the situation, but my experience is that the great majority of times
that people think they have to reinstall, they actually don't. If they
had done a little more troubleshooting first, asked knowledgeable
friends, searched google or Microsoft.com, or asked about their
problem here on the newsgroups, they would likely have found a much
simpler and less Draconian solution to their problem.

There's another big issue with reinstalling to solve problems. You
never find out what was wrong. If the problem was caused by something
you did incorrectly (and it usually is), there's an excellent chance
that you will repeat the same behavior and quickly find yourself back
in the same situation.

The next time it happens I shall attempt to post a message here, hopefully
before I have no other choice but to reinstall.

Good plan! I certainly don't suggest that reinstallation is *never*
necessary.but it is unfortunately done *far* more often than needed.

It's my belief that this notion stems from the technical support
people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost any
problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).

But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates,you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for your
system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work the
way you're comfortable with.

Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.

---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Rock]

I'm currently using Acronis True Image Home, version 10, to image to an
external hard drive. You can purchase a preassembled external drive or put
one together quite easily and for less cost from a bare drive and an
external drive enclosure. Look at Newegg.com for an idea of cost for the
software and hardware. You can put together a 320GB setup for under $100.

I use two external drives and alternate between them on a weekly basis. One
is stored off site. All imaging is set up to run automatically at night - a
full image once a week with daily incremental images.
[/QUOTE]

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

I appreciate your telling us how you have streamlined a full
installation of Windows down to three hours. What I don't understand is
why you have to do this frequently. I've done it once in 18 months on my
desktop computer as a result of operator error (me!) and not at all on
my three-year-old laptop. System Restore is your friend! Acronis True
Image Backup (or some alternate backup program) is your friend.

My XP system has never had a clean install.

I upgraded from Win98 in October of '01 and it worked fine. I
recently built a whole new machine, and cloned the drive from the old
one to another, and did a repair to get it working on this machine.

The Win98 setup had been in place since the mid 90s, and had gone
through a transfer to a completely new computer.

The bozo who said that a clean install is the only way to go is a
clown.

 

[Bob I]

Sounds suspiciously like a malware infestation.

Unfortuately I don't remember why I had to reinstall this last time. But
the misbehavior was dramatic and affected all of my applications. I
couldn't get onto the newsgroups. I tried everything I could think of
before reinstalling. Doing an "Upgrade" install didn't change a thing. So
I moved onto "New Installation". What are your thoughts?

The next time it happens I shall attempt to post a message here, hopefully
before I have no other choice but to reinstall.

Don J

---------------------------------------------------------------