Hi,

In message znr1069169736k@trad, Mike Rivers
writes

In article
writes:

In summary, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle if you simply back up
your documents, reformat your hard drive, and re-install a fresh coat
of Windows XP.

A good approach if all you have on the drive is the OS and some
documents, but if you have three DAW programs, a bunch of plug-ins, a
web browser, a mail program, an Office program (with associated
directories where they expect to find stuff), and a pile of utilities
that you never remember you had until you need one, there's a mighty
good argument for not having to re-install and re-configure
everything.

I don't know if it's common knowledge, but the XP CD has a buried option
called "File and settings transfer wizard" that can be of some help with
this. The idea is that you put the CD in the drive on your existing
system, fire up the wizard, and it creates a file that contains your
Operating System settings and your files (along with their locations on
the drive(s) ). You then run it again on your shiny new install of XP,
and it reinstalls the backup data. It's far from perfect, but it works
okay once you learn how to drive it.

The downside is that it wants to backup *all* your files (i.e. every
drive), so you have to remove or otherwise disable any non-O/S drives
that you don't want it to touch (data drives, and so on). You can't
specify which files to backup by drive letter, which is a serious
omission in my view.

Also, if you have any applications with corrupt or dodgy settings on
your existing drive, it will happily copy these same dodgy settings to
your new drive, which can defeat the object.

The option is in the 'perform other tasks' section of the XP Pro CD. I
don't use XP home, but I believe it works the same way.
--
Glenn Booth