dreamnugget Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 Hi guys (and Gals)...well the old p4 finally hit the fan this morning and failed to properly boot before trying to reboot. It was an unfortunate system that suffered from the affects from a nearby lightning strike, and went slowly down hill from there. Anyways.................I have rebuilt a system using recently gifted mainboard and CPU, utilising my existing memory, PSU, and hard-drive......running xp3 the system wouldnt boot up properly (primarily because of the new hardware I suspect.....yes I am a little slow in this department ), so I re-installed windows on the existing disk (I couldnt repair it coz it wanted the administrator password which it seems I have long forgotten). So a full re-install over the existing windows folder I did, and foolishly hoped that all the stuff I had on the pc ...on the desktop would magicly know where to place itself .......Once it all installed and booted up, discovering the bare desktop I proceeded to start reinstalling the basics (virus scan etc), and one of the files I tried to freshly re-install asked if I wanted to replace the old file ..so search I go and I have found that in the doc and settings folder for user seems to be an identical folders to what I had on the desktop before the crash....FSX, FTX etc etc My question is....Is there a way to get all that stuff backon the desktop, or is it just taking up space? Also when I tried to fire some programs up from there it says that some components are missing and reinstall them again (most likely 'coz windows deleted them during reinstal). Finally, If its not possible to 're-instate ' these to working order on the desktop, would I be better off Deleting them from the user file, or just doing a full, clean, reformatted install? Thanks for taking the time to read this...its late here in QLD, and its been a long day. Cheers Jason \ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahaka Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 Hi Jason, Whenever I do a full reinstall of Windows, I always choose to format the whole hard drive and install it from the beginning. This gives me the safest feeling that nothing weird is left there. What comes to the programs, I believe that during the reinstall Windows deleted all the registry entries/system files of the software, so you would have to reinstall them anyway. If you dont have any imporant files (documents etc.) in your old username folder, then in my opinion you can delete it. But always double or triple check first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolter van der Spoel Posted October 21, 2008 Share Posted October 21, 2008 Hi Jason, Antti is right, best is to make a clean sweep of it and have peace of mind that nothing odd is left there. You could make backups of the files you would want to keep, but be carefull as with saving those the risc of re-importing a bug or screwup into your new install is very present ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BennyHill Posted October 22, 2008 Share Posted October 22, 2008 I like to format my hard disks once a year - usually between Christmas and New Year. Windows seems to pick up a lot of junk over time and tends to get slower and slower until a reformat and re-install cleans it all up. When I upgrade my present system, I will use Norton Ghost 2003 and take an image of the old HD. Restore the image to the new system's HD - usually a bigger one; then install the new motherboard's drivers and away you go. The new system looks just like the old one - right down to the desktop. Obviously my suggestion is to format and install fresh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dreamnugget Posted October 23, 2008 Author Share Posted October 23, 2008 Yeah thats what I figured..thanks for the replies...I was hoping since windows had a folder there with all the previous desktop files in there that there may have been some process to re-establish them. All is good, I stopped re-installing stuff a couple of days ago when I posted this question (so I wasnt totaly wasting time and downloading updates)...so I guess I have a few hours to kill this week end and do a complete re-install with a full reformat and start from scratch.....I'm hanging out to get back into the virtual skies....just gotta double check that I have my ftx and ozx downloaded files on disk to save on downloads.....thanks everyone . Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dreamnugget Posted October 25, 2008 Author Share Posted October 25, 2008 Well I'm back in the sim of things...full XP reinstal, with reformat, then updates, virus scanner, then all of the fsx stuff, re-instal FTX, and OZx...and I'm back. Yes I also defragged. I've gott say that the old P4 3Gig was slow as compared to my current revamped rig. I now have an e6600 hooked up to an Nivida 8600 GT. The old was single core cpu no H/T, and agp graphics...the current dual core 2.4 (ithink) with PCIE...both GPU's were 256 meg, and still only 1 gig ram on board (yes I know...I'll work on it). The diference is huge as far as FSX goes...out in the country in Blue FPS range from 40-60 and in Melbourne will maintain at least 20..in all double the old system. ATM I only have the origonal driver for the GPU installed that it came with...I was wondering if those that use Nvidia cards could post what driver they are having the most success with in XP SP3. Chears everyone, Jason Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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