Tag: REINSTALL

I've been using Fab's AutoBackup for ages on my workbench. It's a nice alternative to MigWiz, and I love the fact that Fab's backs everything up in plain old folders - not a single-file format. If you've ever had a MigWiz backup go awry and wound up with a corrupted file, you know where I'm coming from. The only downside to Fab's is that it wasn't Windows Vista or Windows 7 compatible. That ...

At work, I usually either use a drive imaging program to load the operating system and applications onto a machine. If I'm reformatting a customer's machine, I use WPI (Windows Post Installer) to silently install programs. At home, however, I'm a little less cautious when I reformat and often forget to back up my program installers. That's when something like the Smart Installer Pack might come ...

Thanks to customers who can't avoid spyware and trojans to save their lives, I've gotten pretty quick at backing up, reformatting, and finishing off Windows installs. I've got five core tools that I use to get the job done, and here they are. DriverMax. After going through the install process, the first thing I shoot for is a complete set of functional drivers. Running DriverMax before the ...

I've got a bit of a stumper on my hands. Tomorrow, UPS willing, a brand new hard drive (and a couple other choice upgrades) will be arriving on my doorstep. The new drive is a 250GB SATA number--not a monster, but much bigger and much faster than the ancient 80-gigger I've relied on the for far too long, so the new drive is taking the throne as my system drive ASAP. Here's the stumper: Should I be ...

An unfortunate fact of Windows life is that any Windows install will slowly wear out through use, getting more and more bogged down until finally one must take drastic measures. My own Windows XP install is coming up on a year of use and abuse and has for some time been showing signs this phenomenon, but what I wasn't aware of is that it's possible to create a clean Windows install without the ...

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 ...