Fresh Install just for the fun of it

I had some spare time yesterday and after a full image backup I decided to re-install Win7 32bit. So many dread doing this and I can understand if you have Terabytes of programs and data to recover but data is the easy part is you backup regularly.

It took me 2 hours and that was to install Win7 and get back to normal. The updates for both Win7, Office and hardware were lots.
(FYI, I do have a fast ISP connection)


After Win7, MS Security Essentials and Office I then installed Media Center, Foxit, Ccleaner, Malwarebytes. Oh I forgot to mention that I also keep a copy of my desktop folder that has all my links to my data and stuff. That saves alot of time.
After this was completed I just copied my data folder from backup HD to C: and did a little tweakings. That was it.

I then made a full image of the new HD just for safety sake.
It was fun but I need to make sure I had my ducks in a row just in case I ever had a failure and had to do it under stressfull times.


1 SPECIAL NOTE that wasted some time.
When I did the initial install on C: Win7 installed a boot directory and made my backup drive an Active Partition instead of just a Primary Partition.
I resolved this by unplugging the HD and reinstalling Win7 on C:
After the install I had to go in and change the backup drive back as well as get rid of the boot directory and bootlog it created.
Actually the solution was to backup the whole backup drive to another location and reformat then reinstall my backup stuff on it.

I know Win7 didn't create a 10Meg partition on C: so it may have thought E: drive was a nice place to try it.

Anyhow. It is all done and it wasn't as hard as I suspected. Now how many remember the time it took for WinXP or Vista?
This was a piece of cake compared to them.

Have a great day!

Yes, that is a nice thing to do time to time.

It's a good idea to periodically renew your system by reinstalling your OS(es) as it helps to keep your system running optimally. I usually do this on an annual basis, and in fact I'm contemplating doing this in the near future.

Most of my stuff takes very little time, it's all the customization thats a pain, installing a theme and the icons, ugh. I'd rather just get it all setup and take a system image from a couple days in and just use that if I need to start fresh.

I have a server at home that stores anything that is important. And I keep a separate drive on my local computer for downloads and such.

Therefore, I can usually format and reinstall at a moments notice. Takes about 1-2 hours total to get everything back in place. I don't really use that many programs and the ones that I do use are pretty much all free and small and quick installs. So, I usually just install a handful to get my machine back to usable and only install the others as I get to a point where I need them.

Love Windows 7 said:

Yes, that is a nice thing to do time to time.

Thanks for moving my little message here. I guess this would be the place but I just thought it was general information.



Yes my systems have always ran smoothly after a clean new install. I used to do it in WinXP as well as Vista. One of these days MS will be able to get rid o fth eleft over garbage without running multiple additional programs.

I recently been playing with an Apple computer OS. That sure is easy to remove and add programs. Don't like it. In most cases just drag the directory and dump.
Not much outside the program directories.

Clean reinstall once a year gets the kinks out.

Nowadays it's actually better than getting a new computer, since new computers are loaded with dreaded bloatware so are hamstrung from the start.

The only thing I'd add is to use state-of-the-art free Auslogics Disk and Registry defraggers last to order the HD after all of those Updates, after CCleaning. Ignore the ad for optimizing your PC which appears on results page. Get free Registry defrag download here: http://download.cnet.com/Auslogics-R...=dl&tag=button

Then I run them monthly or however often needed to make them zip across in about 2-5 minutes, no more.