XP reinstall troubles

[BL Ankstone]

Ever hear the term "...just enough to get himself in trouble"? Here I am.
Dell 8200, XP Home. Seemed to be running differently lately, so I ran all my
normal stuff (Norton, ad aware, MS spyware etc), but still was slow loading
pages, programs etc. Loaded a copy of Reg Clean (I believe, it was
reccommended on Langa List newsletter) and I was having so much fun cleaning
stuff off, I guess I went tooo far. I beleive that my troubles are related
to the "duplicate copies" files. It searched, found a bunch of stuff, but it
wasn't obvious what I was supposed to do with all of it after it finished
finding them all. Eventually, I would up freezing while I was trying to get
out of/do something with them. I had to shut down the machine, and upon
start-up, NO XP!!.
I wound up booting from the reinstallation disk, and I also reiinstalled XP.
XP seems to woking fine now, but its a new install. The problem is, after I
was able to find my programs and all thru explorer, most won't open, giving
error or file missing messages. I guess what I actually want, is to get my
programs to run by reinstalling the missing files I removed, and to get the
best of both worlds, reap the benefits of a clean XP install, but get my
settings/favorites/files back in the current version of XP.
Anybody care to help me find my way home??
thanks- Kevin

 

[Kevin]

At this point, I seriously doubt if even using System Restore would help
you. You have installed Windows, a repair install if your information is
correct, and your installed programs don't open or don't work at all. I
hope you had any critical data and files backed up.

I would now perform an actual clean install of XP. Reformat and install
Windows from scratch. You can Google for "clean install windows xp" and get
information. Be wary of those registry cleaning utilities, they can cause
more damage than they are worth.

 

[BL Ankstone]

2nd try.
My newly installed XP seems to be on a different partition (?), and none of
my programs or files are accessible. If I go through explorer to the "C"
drive, everything is still there, and I can access it. However, none of the
programs are availabe through "start/ all programs/..." and most programs
still won't open when I access them from explorer when signed in to the
"new" XP.
Would I be better off just re-installing my programs? I have discs for
Office/Norton/Corel/autoCad etc that I have ownership of, but all of the
stuff that was pre-loaded I guess I will lose.
My question becomes, how should I handle all of the programs? I would need
to remove them, then reload new copies. I can't get them to show up if I go
thru "start/ control panel/add-remove Programs". Should I just delete them
from the explorer listings? Can I move them so that my new system user can
see them?

Suggestions????
thanks -