Re: What's the word on VISTA?

fvicarel3@xxxxxxx wrote:
Thanks for the great advice. I"m following it, and am going to hold-
off as long as possile qwith my desktop (runing win 98) and wait until
Windows 7. If I can get my wife's Toshiba satellite running better,
she can easily keep using for her job..it's just too damn slow now,
but maybe the reinstall will save it. It's not very old.

I have a question about reinstalling the OS on the toshiba. Aside
form all her documents and photos, I assume I must back up all the
programs she uses fo which I don't have installation discs. (I know
the one's I have the discs for I can just reinstall from disc).

But there are some which I don't have discs for, they were either
installed from someone else's discs, or downloaded, etc. Is it
sufficient (and reccomended) to just save them to a stand alone hard
drive using the COPY feature and then copy them back to the Toshiba
after the OS reinstall? Or must they be uninstalled from the
Toshiba. My experience is verty limited, but it seems like I've
encounered situations where a program/application couldn't be copied
and pasted, but instead had to be installed. Also, if the COPY
function is acceptable and reccomended, after I've copied them to the
satdn alone drive, should thy still be uninstalled from the Toshiba
before reinstalling the OS? IN toher words, will the OS reinstall be
smoother and work better if the Toshiba;'s hard drive is as stripped
down as possible, or will that not matter?

I've also got some programs on their which were purchased with a
finite amount of insatllations and we've used them all up....do you
happen to know if uninstalling such a programs "gives" you another
installation?

Thanks again for this advice. If I can get her Toshiba backl to
resaonable speed, it will be a real coup for us.

Fredo


The answer to your questions are...well, they are complicated and variable. Warning: geek factor is high.

On the contents of the laptop:

Except for some special cases that have to do with the operating system and interaction with hardware devices, think of all the stuff on your computer as one of two broad types of files:
(1)
Data files (pictures, documents, videos, music, CAD drawings, images, whatever). These are often files you've created, paid for or have either setimental or financial value. These are the things that can't be re-created if you haven't backed them up.

Yes, it's sufficient to back them up externally (external hard drive or optical media (CD or, more likely DVD), depending on the amount of data you have to move. These days, I wouldn't consider using anything other than an external hard drive, but maybe you have lots of time and optical media on your hands:-)

(2)
Application files
These are the programs that allow you to display, create or edit your data files (for some file types you can do this with more than one application, and some are pretty closely tied to a single application...only you know your own user needs...).

You got your application files installed one of two ways:
-running the installation media. This is most often from a CD that you either purchased or somebody shared with you.
-running a an executable file (.exe usually) that you downloaded or that somebody shared with you.

Licensing and digital rights management vary widely, but whether a CD or an executable file, you shouldn't encounter any issues with reinstalls on the same machine (unless it's a trial version); you may run into issues with some applications if you try to install on more machines than you purchased licenses for.

Unless you do a full disk image (which is different than a copy/paste), you can't just transfer the "old" applications to your "refreshed" machine. This is because the interaction of the application files with the operating system. During install, applications dump stuff not only into your Programs directory, but add content to the Windows registry...this can't be created by copy/paste.

Besides: issues with the registry and application system residue (often called "Windows rot") are probably leading to your slowdown.

So, yeah, you want to use the option that completely reformats that laptop (you'll get about a dozen "are you sure" prompts when you insert the recovery disks).

As for the application CDs that were borrowed: hope you're still friends with those folks...












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