reformatting

[jakatak]

Is there anyway to reformat the hard drive without reinstalling the original sound card and video card? Both have been upgraded and I find it particularly annoying that I cannot get rid of the registry bloat I've collected over the past two years.

[der King Mongo]

Basically, no. The only way to clean out your registry if you don't know how to do it by hand, is to recreate it. If you recreate it, you'll need to reinstall your "stuff." I guess you *could* copy the appropriate keys for your hardware and then put them back in after you reformat, but that sort of implies that you know what you're doing in the registry (back to the Catch-22). Just bite the bullet and reinstall all your goodies after the reformat.

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***He who eats when he is full, digs his grave with his teeth***

[jakatak]

Is this the best that the gurus can give....geez...

[Paleo Pete]

Didn't quite understand your post at first, but now I think I get the drift...

If you're saying you have pulled the physical cards and replaced them, no you don't have to reinstall the originals, simply leave the replacements in when you format and reinstall Windows.

If you're referring to software upgrades, as in drivers, I think you'll have to reinstall the driver upgrades. If this is Windows 98 it usually finds its own drivers for most components, for the sound card you can try installing it after installing Windows and see if it gives you an option to search for drivers, and use the browse feature to point to the driver you want to use.

To replace the registry without reinstalling Windows, you can replace it with a day 1 copy, the files are system.da0 and user.da0. These are the copies of the first registry, and will restore it to a fresh install condition. This involves renaming the files, in DOS, and you also lose all registry entries for software you have installed since the original Windows install. I don't recommend renaming files in a DOS environment unless you KNOW what you're doing.

Stick around...that still might not be the best the "gurus" can do http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

But let's try not to be insulting, Mongo's trying, that's all you can expect.

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If you had everything...Where would you put it?

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[Bmcdanold]

I agree with Mongo however. A fresh reinstall will clear your computer of any problems and it will actually run a whole lot faster. Windows is a very "messy" operating system. But if you dont have the installation disks for the sound card and the video card, i would recommend trying to update their drivers, just to see if windows will provide a driver for any of them. If windows does have drivers for them, go full speed ahead through a reformat reinstall!

[Matt]

One quick fix that MIGHT work is using something like the Norton Optimization Wizard. This does not require re-installing Windows and there is a chance that it may work well enough that you can tell a difference in performance. As for formatting your hard drive and re-installing windows I don't recommend doing that unless you are positive that you have everything you need (Windows install disk and CD and a lot of free time). I have been through re-installing windows and it was not as easy as installing it for the first time. When I finally got everything running correctly on my computer I had re-formatted my hard drive and re-installed Windows over 15 times over an entire weekend! Things like the bios setting may cause problems when Windows tries to detect ISA, PCI, or AGP cards. Also Windows was unable to locate my CDrom drive until after I removed my second HD drive. Formatting your Hard disk and performing a clean install of windows will speed up your computer but be ready for a lot of trouble-shooting if anything goes wrong.