fixing windows xp issues
Author
Hello, quick question.
Windows, and namely Firefox, are no longer working correctly on my Dell Inspiron 9300. It's a bugger lately. I have one drive partitioned into C:\ for WINDOWS and D:\EVERYTHING ELSE. I would like to do a solid reinstallation and/or repair of the Windows partition... anything I need to do to "fix" the [Firefox] issues as easily as possible and "refresh" my computer. How can this be done without messing about too much with D:\ drive material (programs, user stuff, music, video, etc.)? I am guessing programs like photoshop and office will not work correctly after... is that right? Will they have to be reinstalled?
Basically, I want to fix the damn OS on C:\ without having to do too much work in the other drive, since that was the point of partitioning them in the first place.
Any help welcome. Thanks!
You should be able to simply reinstall Windows on your c:\ partition without ever needing to format anything, or mess with your partitioning scheme. However, reinstalling Windows will, as you have guessed, make you need to reinstall all your other applications as well.
If you are going to do a full install, I would go ahead and format the drive. It helps get rid of any junk that might have accululated as well as making sure you are starting from a complete scratch.
I would uninstall photoshop if you can, so you can remove the license information so you can "transfer" it to the new install. The way adobe says their licening system works, it acts like you don't need to do this, but I think it might fall under better safe than sorry.
I would uninstall photoshop if you can, so you can remove the license information so you can "transfer" it to the new install. The way adobe says their licening system works, it acts like you don't need to do this, but I think it might fall under better safe than sorry.
What version of window are you using? If it is XP, try look at the Event Viewer, to see what errors you have. To get the event viewer, goto the "start" button, click on "run" and type in "eventvwr", without quotes, and press enter. See what you find.
If you don't have XP, upgrade.
If you don't have XP, upgrade.
Quote:Original post by Driv3MeFar
However, reinstalling Windows will, as you have guessed, make you need to reinstall all your other applications as well.
Not necesserily. If the programs have been coded wisely they shouldnt need reinstalled.
When you reformat your windows partition you will lose the registry, plus any special drivers / dlls any application requires. Upon running an application after the reformat, they will try to access the registry/driver/dlls the program needs. Some programs will detect the files are missing, and automatically replace them (i believe office does this) and continue to function normally. Other less well written programs will crash and need re-installed.
I guess this is a little lesson for all you programmers. Rather than just setting the registry variables during install, then testing for them when running, why not add some code to your testing routine that automatically re-creates them if they are not found. Saves needing to re-install after nuking windows.....
This topic is closed to new replies.
Advertisement
Popular Topics
Advertisement
