Though I've had a pretty good run, I know in my heart that I really ought to reinstall Windows. As anyone who has gone though that particular ordeal knows, however, it's much easier said than done, and getting back into your carefully-tweaked workflow after a reinstall can take, quite literally, months, and the day you realize you forgot to backup that one Really Important File is a sad day indeed. So how can you reinstall Windows without the risks? Virtualization. Now, we featured
a similar tip a few months back, but Márton Anka has written a handy tutorial that teaches you
how to back up your entire system to a VMWare image that you can load, without a reboot, every time you need something from your old Windows install. Now, if only I had the spare hard drive space for this...
Tags: Marton Anka, MartonAnka, reinstall, virtualization, vmware, windows, xp
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Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsResortMay 23rd 2006 4:12AM
Using other software will most likely get the job done as well.
Claudiu SpulberMay 23rd 2006 4:32AM
Well it's not like you keep the important files all over your hard drive, so using a backup program to backup your documents would be good too (plus you spare some space as you don't backup the system files too). Don't know if this is recommended, but when I reinstall the system I only format the partition where it will be installed, and I keep all the important files on the other partitions.
PeterMay 23rd 2006 6:44AM
Claudiu - As the article says, it's not about the data it's about the applications. When you can't find the install file for that great app you downloaded from somewhere it really doesn't matter if you have the data file or not. That's the whole point of this. You can boot the VM run the app and look for the install file later.
RichardMay 23rd 2006 6:55AM
What I do is use Partition Magic to shrink the current partition down as small as possible, create a new partition BEFORE the currently used one (which is as big as possible) and then install Windows XP into that.
Once you've done that, you can install all the missing applications and files and then, once you're totally happy you have everything, blow away the old partition and resize the current one to take up its space.
Claudiu SpulberMay 24th 2006 3:09AM
Peter - You're right, the full article refers to applications not data (I initially read only the DS article). On the other hand, I always download using FDM and have it pointing to the D: partition (not on the desktop). This way if I like the application I also keep its installer.