Got a few problems with my windows xp at the moment...
Search files doesnt work, my firewire devices dont work etc.
Is there any mileage in doing an in place upgrade/install to try and
fix any issues?
It doesn't hurt to try a repair installation. It may or may not fix
your problem, but it's easy to do, and should be at least worth a try.
Back up anything you can't afford to lose first, just in case.
Or am I going to have to bite the bullet and do a
complete re-format and install?
It's very hard to answer that, since you've told us next to nothing
about your problems. But here's my standard advice on doing that.
Why do you want to reformat and reinstall? In my view, it's usually a
mistake. With a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to
reinstall Windows (XP or any other version). I've run Windows 3.0,
3.1, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Windows XP,
each for the period of time before the next version came out, and each
on two machines here. I never reinstalled any of them, and I have
never had anything more than an occasional minor problem.
It's my belief that this mistaken 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.
One other point: if you just reinstall Windows without finding out
what caused your problem, you will likely repeat the same behavior
that caused it, and quickly find yourself back where you started.
