I'm going to be reformatting. . .

[godspeedx]

. . .soon because there are a ton of little things goin screwy right now. They were caused by some viruses a while ago and that's all cleared up but the consequences are upon me.

Now for my question - do I need to backup any files besides the programs and personal files I want?

I've also always been confused on the details of the difference of actually reformatting your hard drive and doing a clean install of windows. When someone says to do a clean install does that mean a reformat? Can someone explain?

Thanks.

 

[JetBlack69]

favorites, I ALWAYS forget to backup my favorites.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

Do you NEED to back-up anything? No

Should you back up some things? Probably

Would I back some things up? Definetly.

yes, definetly back-up your favorites. Maybe your cookies too.

I find that something VERY helpful to do though, is make a .txt file of all the programs you have on your desktop and\or start menu that you use. Download the installer files for those. If you have a second hard drive, make a new folder and put it there, if not, burn them to a CD.

Important things to remember to put on CD\folder:

Display Drivers
Motherboard Drivers

as well as your other important things was just a segment of mine.

Adobe Acrobat
DivX
Google toolbar
SP1 + fixes
Winamp
Office XP Pro
Spybot
Adaware
TweakUI
3dmark01
3dmark 03
Sisoft Sandra
Trillian
Divx
Quicktime
WinRAR
PowerStrip

You know, just the stuff you use most of the time to every day, but would never think it was actually installed.

I hardly remembered I installed quick time until all of my IE media files wanted to play in WMP.

If you download your email from an email server with outlook, you may want to make a back-up of that too.

Oh, and definetly make sure you have your ISP CD, login, password, user # stuff readily available.

If you have any saved games that you want to save, good idea to put those on there as well

 

[godspeedx]

Alright thanks a lot.

Where can I find my display drivers and motherboard drivers?

 

[Stratosphere]

Vid Card drivers will be at the maker of your graphic chipset, probably ati.com or nvidia.com.
Motherboard drivers will be at the maker of your board like abit, or asus etc. But make sure you get the correct ones so look at your model numbers.

 

[godspeedx]

Alright thank you thank you.

 

[Sid59]

though it's not a hardware question ..

when you're done installing .. use ghost. ..

 

[godspeedx]

Originally posted by: Sid59
though it's not a hardware question ..

when you're done installing .. use ghost. ..

hmm?

 

[boyRacer]

Originally posted by: godspeedx

Originally posted by: Sid59
though it's not a hardware question ..

when you're done installing .. use ghost. ..

hmm?

norton ghost

 

[Twista]

Originally posted by: boyRacer

Originally posted by: godspeedx

Originally posted by: Sid59
though it's not a hardware question ..

when you're done installing .. use ghost. ..

hmm?

norton ghost

imma help him out and say "hmm"

 

[Sid59]

Originally posted by: Twista

Originally posted by: boyRacer

Originally posted by: godspeedx

Originally posted by: Sid59
though it's not a hardware question ..

when you're done installing .. use ghost. ..

hmm?

norton ghost

imma help him out and say "hmm"

google it.

 

[ledzepp98]

getting back to important hardware drivers... make sure you have the drivers for your network card (or modem). without them, you can't go online to get drivers for the rest of your hardware (unless your OS natively supports your network card or modem)

 

[godspeedx]

Originally posted by: Sid59

Originally posted by: Twista

Originally posted by: boyRacer

Originally posted by: godspeedx

Originally posted by: Sid59
though it's not a hardware question ..

when you're done installing .. use ghost. ..

hmm?

norton ghost

imma help him out and say "hmm"

google it.

I know what ghost is, I just didn't get what he was saying - "though it's not a hardware question. . ." Oh maybe it was because I posted it in here, the general hardware forum.