 | Quick Reinstallation of Your System
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Prior to Windows XP, Microsoft’s operating systems were notoriously temperamental. Over time, instability could build up until it became necessary to wipe the hard drive and reinstall a fresh version of the system and all user applications. This doesn’t seem to occur as readily with XP, but hardware failure and infection by viruses and spyware can lead to the same need for a total system reinstallation. This is an extremely laborious process, involving lots of restarts of the computer, loading up all your applications one at a time, finding the most recent drivers, changing defaults back to your preferred settings, re-establishing network, Internet, and email connections, and so on. This can literally take years off your life. But there is a better way…
The Magic of Drive Partitioning
and Imaging
If you strike problems and need a total reinstallation, and your hard drive has not been partitioned in any meaningful way, all your software — operating system, applications, and data (assuming you have backups) — will need to be painfully reinstalled from scratch. So that’s next weekend taken care of!
On the other hand, if you have planned for the inevitable and partitioned your drive (see FixTool’s tutorial on Organizing Your Hard Drive With Partitions), you can be up and running in next to no time. The other important aspect involved in this rapid reinstallation process is drive imaging. As implied by the word “image”, this is not the same thing as simply copying all the files on a particular drive; you need to use specialized software such as Norton Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/) or Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/) to create an exact copy of the entire drive. An image includes special data that can’t be copied in the normal way, and, without it, your system won’t work.
Tip: Many drive imaging programs ship with partitioning tools.
The following steps provide a basic framework for future rapid, trouble-free system installations:
1. Initial planning
Starting with a pristine hard drive (either new or newly formatted), work out your preferred partitioning system and create and format those partitions. As an absolute minimum you will need two partitions (one for operating system and programs, and one for data), but it is highly recommended that you have three or more.
2. Install the operating system
Install the basic operating system on your C drive partition. Make sure this includes a working Internet connection as well. At this point it is wise to make an image of the drive, in case you ever need to come back to this basic, unabridged level.
Next, update your operating system with the latest patches, and get the latest versions of your preferred Web browser, DirectX, and so on. After tweaking settings to your preferred requirements, make another image.
3. Install application programs
Start with your most frequently used programs. You can make as many images as you like throughout this process, you never know how uncluttered a system you may need to refer back to in the future. If you are installing programs to (say) the D drive, make sure you image both C and D when each new snapshot is taken (this is because the C drive will have system information referring to each new installed program).
4. Ongoing maintenance
Whenever new programs or significant updates are installed, make new images of each affected drive. Keep at least some of the images on your hard drive (say, on a special Backups partition) to allow easy access, but make sure you have copies of all images on CD/DVD to deal with the inevitable hard drive failure.
When Disaster Strikes
When something goes wrong with your system, it is now a simple matter of deciding how far back you want to go (which will depend on the nature of your problem), reformat the appropriate partition(s), and use your imaging program to install the required image(s).
Tip: Make sure you know how to do this before you need it for the first time.
You no longer have to wade through piles of CDs, or reboot the computer constantly, or rack your brain trying to remember all your settings. A job that once was measured in days can now be carried out in minutes. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
- Assuming your user data is isolated on a separate partition, it should theoretically be unaffected by wiping out the system and program files. But it would be wise to back up these files (by copying or imaging), just in case something unexpected happens to your stored images or hard drive.
- Before reformatting your Windows and program partition(s), be sure to make copies of folders and files that contain user information like Internet bookmarks (favorites), cookies, address books, email, program settings, and so on. These files will be overwritten by their relatively blank counterparts within your image(s) and will need to be replaced by your newer versions after the image installation. Reading program Help information or doing a Google search should guide you in this respect.