[FreeSpaceFreak]

My computer started acting increasingly weird. Installers work only half, uninstallers as well, even add/remove programs fails at removing stuff - guess it's time to format my HD.
Which I have never done before. So, eh, do you know any good howto's, do's/don'ts, tips or anything? I could definitely use it

A couple of specific questions:
- Should I stick to trusty old WinXP or take the step to Win7?
- My HD is currently partitioned, will formatting affect only one of the partitions or all of them?

[General Battuta]

posting in this thread to see if posting in this thread works for angelus

[Angelus]

The first step: Make sure you have all important Files backed up. If you have lots of Bookmarks, export them and back them up too.

For WinXP or Win7, that depends on your System.
If it's powerfull enough, you could try win7, the comments on it suggest that it's one of the best Windows OS.

Oh, and if you have software that requires activation keys, make sure you have them somewhere save before formating, i've learned my lesson on that one and it was quite a expensive one.



Ok, that was freaking weird...i mean, trying to post in this thread.

[Wobble73]

From all reports but not personal experience. Take the step to Win7!

As for the second question, you are only installing to one partition, like only to one hard drive, other partitions shouldn't be affected!

[Nuke]

aside from the obvious of back up your files, make damn sure you have all your drivers. especially your network drivers. sucks when you format and you cant get on the internet to download drivers because you dont have network drivers. i maintain a driver archive for all my hardware as well as drivers for various operating systems, just in case.

[JGZinv]

Formatting a disk takes out the partitions in the process usually.

Formatting is done to "format" the drive for partitioning and a file system.

You thought about doing an in-place Windows repair first?
Tis No.10 here: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6031733.html
Can't really hurt you, although I've seen a device here or there need the drivers
reinstalled or updated. Not a big deal and you can keep on doing.

Tried running an eset online virus scan?

BTW, by back up... they mean to an external device such as an external HD or
DVDs... don't backup to the same physical drive you're wiping.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Yes, I figured I'd need to buy an external HD for this. I also got an Ubuntu disc here, that'll get me on the internet and all if Windows doesn't at first (though I'm not gonna install Ubuntu again).
I've been running this PC for two years now, and it was configured by the uni first; I mean, there's a ****load of stuff on here that has no real purpose, and I wanna fully clean it out.
My only problem is, I got a shiny full (legal!) version of MS Office 2003 here, that I'd like to keep; I guess that falls under the "activation keys" issue you mentioned, Angelus. Is there any way I can use it again after the formatting?

Got a 2.5GHz processor and 2GB of internal memory; would Win7 be a good choice then?

[JGZinv]

You'd need the original install media.
All your product keys can be ripped and displayed/saved/printed with various
key utilities.

Softkey Revealer works well http://sites.google.com/site/cakirbey/softkeyrevealer

[Bobboau]

if you have the space you can make an image of your hard drive and that way you'll be able to still get things off it after it's gone.

[S-99]

You should practice on an sd card first, or you'll rip your dick off.

Gparted livecd...bootable partition manager formatter...etc...it's really good, it'll even move your data from one side of a partition to another so you can do some nifty partition resizing. Recommending this because no matter what people say, windows is piss poor at supporting other filesystems, partition resizing, formatting, etc.

Formatting a disk takes out the partitions in the process usually.

Formatting is done to "format" the drive for partitioning and a file system.

Wrong. You can format whatever the hell you want. If you have 3 partitions, you can format easily format any partition you want without touching the others. Or you can just format the whole freaking drive.

[Wobble73]

Thought so! You can treat any partition of a hard drive as a separate hard drive in it's self!

[Nuke]

i tend to make my windows partition as small as possible, and put all my files on an entirely different partition (i seldom use the user folders provided by windows). this makes it easy to nuke the os while leaving my files intact. of course i use two entirely different hard drives and a third for backup since my computer has 3 of them totaling to just over a terabyte.

[S-99]

That's the cool thing i liked about vista and 7. Was that it has a thing that lets you relocate your user folder anywhere you want. Files and all no pain.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

Hmm, I don't have a CD of MS Office... If I backup the files and then move them back to C:\Program files after formatting, I would have to create the appropriate registry entries by hand, I guess?

Actually, does Office 2003 work properly on Win7? If not, I'll need OpenOffice anyway.

[Nuke]

That's the cool thing i liked about vista and 7. Was that it has a thing that lets you relocate your user folder anywhere you want. Files and all no pain.

i think you could do that with any windows as far back as 2000. its just not very obvious how to use it. windows 7 just seemed to give a bunch of those less known features better user interfaces. but if you ever go through your user folder you will find a bunch of crap you never wanted in your user folder, which is why i dont use them.

[jr2]

That's the cool thing i liked about vista and 7. Was that it has a thing that lets you relocate your user folder anywhere you want. Files and all no pain.

i think you could do that with any windows as far back as 2000. its just not very obvious how to use it.

Yeah, it's in the registry somewhere...  

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/userpath.htm

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE\ Microsoft\ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ ProfileList

[Bob-san]

Got a 2.5GHz processor and 2GB of internal memory; would Win7 be a good choice then?

What processor? 2.5GHz tells us little. An Athlon 64 X2? A Pentium Dual-Core? What chip? And usually, I'd suggest starting with NT6 on 3-4GB RAM. It is known for eating up a lot of memory with the pre-fetchers (which is actually a good thing). My system with 6GB RAM has now 3GB used.

[jr2]

Got a 2.5GHz processor and 2GB of internal memory; would Win7 be a good choice then?

What processor? 2.5GHz tells us little. An Athlon 64 X2? A Pentium Dual-Core? What chip? And usually, I'd suggest starting with NT6 on 3-4GB RAM. It is known for eating up a lot of memory with the pre-fetchers (which is actually a good thing). My system with 6GB RAM has now 3GB used.

P4 Celery... 512 KB Cache!! Wooo!  lolz  /random sarcasm

[FreeSpaceFreak]

What processor? 2.5GHz tells us little. [...]

Intel Penryn Pro T9300 ; the pc is an HP Compaq 8510w. It's supposed to be able to run Vista, so I guess Win7 should perform good enough as well.

[Klaustrophobia]

"run" and "perform" are two VERY different words when we are talking about OS compatibility claims.