When you reformat/reinstall OS...

[Trey]

What all do you back up, and what all steps do you take? I've done this about twice in the past year and a half, and I think its time for it again tonight. I'm just curious as to what everyone else does, maybe I'll come across some good ideas.

I usually, backup the entire program files folder, and take what I need out of it later, all my personal files & email, anything that I have downloaded that I don't want to download again.

[bigdadday]

I am also new at this but when I do a reformat now I at least have remembered to make a backup of all the sites I go to and also all my favorites as well. I have it on a floppy but do have a hardcopy of my sites and passwords so I also will remember who is who and where it's at. BD

I usually always go by the same name as I see nothing wrong with it but the passwords do have to be changed from forum to forum. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Dove19983]

I Backup a personal folder i have.
My Favorites.
AIM Settings.
And I also made a list of things i have done to customize windows.

[club_med]

I backup e-mails, progs, files, icq files, just about everything possible.

cm

[Tron]

For ReInstall i normaly just format
the C: drive putting my files on D:
but for savety i backup onto CD.
I also use Norton-Ghost sometimes.
After a clean-install. just backup C:
and nexttime(if you donot change config.)
Win is installd in 5min.

[Yar1182]

If you create a seperat partican and put all you documents, MP3's, downloads you won't need to back up and reinstall everything. Create 2 particians one for you OS and apps, and the other for data. This also helps because you can back up your whole data partician in one shot.

As far as stuff to back up

Docs
ahh.. Pictures
MP3's
ahh.. Movies and videos
browser bookmarks
downloaded files
set-up files for all those downloaded apps