Hi I am new, and need some help.

[twinpack]

Well first off I would like to say hello to everyone here. Hello. Well a guy I work with told me about this site and said that I could get some good help here. What I want to do is reformat and reindtall XPpro. But I have no idea on how to back up things on my hard drive and then reinstall them after. If anyone can help or give me some good links for a bigtime noob it would be appreciated. TIA.

 

[RemyCanad]

Welcome.

Well first off how much are you looking to backup? Could you total the size of all the files you are wanting to get?

Here are some questions for you.

1. Are you wanting to backup program. (not so easy)

2. Do you have a CD-RW drive?

3. Do you have a Zip drive?

4. Do you have multiple HDs

5. Do you have a network that you can transfer all the files to another machine with?

6. What OS are you running right now? Windows 98?

7. If your running windows 98 you could just upgrade over it. (I don't like to do that but others have had great success with it)

I will look for some good links for you.

I have one major peice of advice, make sure your backups are good! Take them to another computer and make sure you can read them and they are good.

 

[twinpack]

I have XPpro on the machine now, just want to start fresh but sont want to lose things like mp3's, a bunch of maps for games and some movies. There is alot that I can just reinstall from the original cd. I also have a cd burner, 1 hard drive, 40 gig, no other puters in my house exept an old 486. I want to whipe it clean and just put some stuff back into it with out a huge hassle. Thanks for the help!!

 

[AndrewPaulNet]

Hey,

OK well first off....A fresh start is good. Now all you have to ask yourself is:

Do I have all my software I want to reinstall on CD?

If there's stuff you downloaded, I recommend you burn it all to a few CDs. This as well as your Mp3s and Videos.

Here's what I do when I want a fresh start. I go through all the programs and see what I want to be on my fresh install. I then download the newest versions and latest drivers and put them on a CD - I often make a 'Fresh OS' CD before I start over, and it usually is the 650-700 megs of stuff which includes Zip, Rar, Ace, Multimedia programs, Productivity and Image Editing, Maintenance Programs and drivers for the new Os.

Then you want to put all your Mp3s and Videos to CDs.....

Then you check everything over to see that it's working... Then, if everything works, you're good to go.

P.S: I'd recommend you buy a cheapy small hard drive for things like this (5-10 gigs is good enough).

 

[Trashman]

TwinPack....if you can, I suggest getting a copy of MaximumPC magazine, August 2002 Issue ...They have a good article about giving "XP a Clean Start". It gives you step by step instructions how to do back up your system, before reformatting...if you also care to image your drive afterwards, and save it on CD-Rs, so down the road if windows gets to be acttin up and you wanna reformat again, you have complete image from before....They use a program called Drive Image in the article...its a great how-to....worth checking out, just a thought anyway.

 

[twinpack]

hey, thanks alot you guys. I will check into the magazine also. anyone have any linkage for a couple sites that might go into detail on this stuff also. i like to read a bit before jumping into something like this.

 

[RemyCanad]

Some random site Link
ZDnet Link

 

[AndrewPaulNet]

Originally posted by: Trashman
TwinPack....if you can, I suggest getting a copy of MaximumPC magazine, August 2002 Issue ...They have a good article about giving "XP a Clean Start". It gives you step by step instructions how to do back up your system, before reformatting...if you also care to image your drive afterwards, and save it on CD-Rs, so down the road if windows gets to be acttin up and you wanna reformat again, you have complete image from before....They use a program called Drive Image in the article...its a great how-to....worth checking out, just a thought anyway.

I agree comepletely. And if you can't find it in the newstands - I believe you can either lookup or purchase back issues from Maximum PCs Web Site .

Good Luck.