Killing Registry to do a reinstall

[COLN]

I came across raisin.com instructions that advise not doing a reformat and reinstall; it is suggested instead that "kill the registry and let windows figure it out after a restart" Everything seems straight forward through the removing of attributes and and deleting of the suggested registry files and backups. It gets sticky when it sa;ys to "restart the system (boot disk?) and use the SETUP program from the C:\Windows|Options\CABS" If I am using SETUP what is the advantage of the deletions?. Isn't WIndows SETUP the same as if I use the boot disk and then the CD?

[AllGamer]

yes and no

when i need a quick fix, and i don't want to loose my safe games, and other files

i just delete USER.DAT, and SYSTEM.DAT

then run setup

and everything goes heck a lot faster than doing a CD install from boot.

so i guess is just the speed difference.

[The_Shafer]

Just from my personal experience, I have cleaned out the registry and when I went back (like after a reinstall of my OS) some of the programs wouldn't work. This was because of the changes the programs would make to the registry when the installation was commencing. In otherwords, it's always a risk, but for the most part, if something doesn't run, just reinstall it.

The_Shafer@hotmail.com

The_Shafer

[nishant]

I'd be careful around the registry, I tried that once and windows never loaded again (figure of speech, ofcourse it working right now lool )

Regards
-Nishant

[Midknyte]

for win9x, i usually copy the win9x folder to the hard drive first. then i run setup from there. this way, the system will never ask you to insert the windows cd in order to update networking, etc. It's just a time saver for me.