AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - - Echo / M-Audio / Lynx comparisons?

In article writes:

Trust, mainly. I know that it's supposed to be possible to "reinstall
Windows" without changing anything else

If you get problems, that isn't what you want. You want a fresh
install onto a cleanly-formatted partition.

That would require re-installing all of my applications. They're not
broken so I shouldn't have to re-install them.

I suppose that if I was really diligent (how many of you are there?) I
should install ALL applications on a different partition than Windows
so I could bang on Windows all I wanted and once it's running, all the
applications will come up as they were. But that's assuming that
things that characterize the applications aren't stored on the Windows
partition - like in the Registry, or in the /system directory. There
may be a way of getting around that (can the Registry be on a
different partition than the rest of Windows)

In any case, this is more than I want to learn about the inner
workings of computers.

I have three computers here, one with Win98SE, one with Win2000,
and one with WinXP Home. So far I've not encountered any problems that
have tempted me to do a re-installation.

Excellent! Either you're very lucky, or your computers aren't music
production tools. If they were, you'd probably have taken much more
interest in specifying and maintaining them :-)

One is exclusively for music - the Win98 one. But I don't load it down
with gadgets. I use one program to edit stereo files, and another
program to write CDs. I have a copy of Word on there to take notes,
and Excel to keep track of expenses during session, but it's not on
the Internet and I don't install things on it that don't need to be on
it. The other two computers are more general purpose, though I have
the same audio applications installed on them and use them
occasionally, the desktop (win2000) hardly serious because I use the
internal sound card that came with the computer.

The laptop (WinXP) has a decent Digigram sound card and I consider
that to be my "backup" audio computer, and the one I use when I have
something to test for a review. I can carry that into the studio, hook
up real audio hardware top it, and not take a chance messing up the
working studio computer. WinXP is a little better about cleanly
uninstalling things than earlier versions so I've been reasonably
successful with keeping that one fairly clean. But it does have a
bunch of stuff installed on it that I've downloaded and use
occaisonally so I try to keep a CD of downloaded stuff reasonably
current in case I have to install it somewhere else (or again on the
same computer).

--
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However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
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