My PC has been acting up over the past year. At first, it was a minor annoyance, and now one of my applications won't function properly. So it's time for re-install of Vista.
My questions are:
What must I do to ensure that I properly capture Photoshop actions before reformatting the drive? I hope all my actions are in one location, though they might not be.
I suspect that I should "deactivate" my Adobe applications before uninstalling or reformatting the drive?
Any particular tips on reinstalling Vista that would prove useful?
Any recommendation on a good back-up program? I am using the default program that came with Maxtor and am not completely satisfied because it complains that some files cannot be copied over.
I am planning to figure out how to safe my FireFox browser with all its settings and addins. I will, of course, back-up the hard-drive.
My general plan of attack is to disconnect from the internet. Throw in the Vista disk that came with my PC. Start the re-installation/reformat process. Once Vista is reinstalled, run SP1. Next, install MS Office. Install virus scanner, although still disconnected to the internet. Next, install Adobe Photoshop CS3 or CS4, haven't decided. Install Adobe Acrobat. And then begin installing other programs.
Connect PC to the Internet and allow for all the updates, including Microsoft Vista/Office and virus scanner updates. Register various software.
Start loading back my data.
I dread this process but I am looking forward to have a "new" pc once again. Entropy does seem to take its toll.
Actions,
the only way I have ever found to move them is to copy them one by one to a folder off the the drive you are going to reload.
Plugins
CS3, copy the entire plugins folder from your extisting install, then after you reinstall, copy it back. You will get registration issues for plug in's that reguire one, but should be able to re register
Actual license,
You have to remember to deactivate your CS3 and CS4 license on the machine. Then just reinstall them.
Lightroom,
From what I can tell has to deactivate, so it's uninstall reinstall, using same codes.
You will also have to contact microsoft (I believe) to reactivate the Vista license. Even if you reinstall it on the same machine, when you try to reactive it should tell you codes are already in use. This takes some time as you have to get someone outside of India who can speak good english.
If you are going to do a full reinstall, I would also recommend using fdsik and have it totally blow away your current partition. I have never liked reinstalling any Microsoft OS over the old install without blowing away the active partition. I would then use Fdisk to create a new partion, make it active, and format it FAT32. Then when you reinstall vista, it will see that parition and tell you it has to be reformated to NTFS, which it will do. IMO you have now cleared out any of old version of Vista by doing this.
I am going to have Dell walk me through the process on the reinstalling Vista. So I hope that they can do that verification, contacting MSFT or whatever.
My XPS system has only one hard drive with a raid backup. I am not sure if I have my terminology correct. It is one drive box, with two drives inside, one as a backup.
I do want a complete fresh install. None of this installing over the existing installation stuff.
If you look on your Dell system unit, there's a sticker with your Vista license code somewhere. You'll need that to re-validate Vista. But it shouldn't be that difficult.
On most Dell systems, you can reinstall using the System Restore partition (typically drive D) -- which is faster than restoring from DVD. I suspect you have a Raid 0 system, which is purely about faster disk access and doesn't offer backup -- but that's irrelevant since the RAID BIOS takes care of making it look like a single drive to Vista.
If you look on your Dell system unit, there's a sticker with your Vista license code somewhere. You'll need that to re-validate Vista. But it shouldn't be that difficult.
Thank you. I am sure that Dell tech support can walk me through the initial part of initiating and then validating Vista.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MathewLodge
On most Dell systems, you can reinstall using the System Restore partition (typically drive D) -- which is faster than restoring from DVD. I suspect you have a Raid 0 system, which is purely about faster disk access and doesn't offer backup -- but that's irrelevant since the RAID BIOS takes care of making it look like a single drive to Vista.
I definitely requested the back-up as opposed to the faster access. Right mouse click on Computer: OS (C) (181 GB free of 455 GB), RECOVERY (D) (4.94 GB free of 9.99 GB).
Since I need to start monkeying around with Vista, I want the "clean hard-drive, starting from scratch" scenario. I want to remove all the junk that Dell initially loaded.
I find that over time, the OS becomes clogged with junk. So I am looking forward to having a clean system, at least for a while.
Retracing one's every step since building a computer can be a nightmare. The only upside is that if there are things you no longer use, you can avoid installing them (or at the very least postpone the installs until last).
Faced with the situation of installing Vista as an upgrade to my XP system (literally, I couldn't upgrade x64 but had to do a full clean install), I actually bought a new old workstation, just so I wouldn't have to rush through the process. That was a good move, insofar as it actually ended up taking me more than 2 months, including some time to battle unforeseen problems, to bring my Vista system to the point where I was ready to swap it in as my "live" day-to-day system.
All I can offer as advice that hasn't already been given is this: Exhaust all possibilities for system recovery before committing to starting over. It's possible the system recovery process may find a happy medium for you.
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