Reinstalling Vista?

muffler

I recently had a problem with a printer and had geared myself up towards the possibility of having to reinstall the Vista OS. I backed up emails, uninstalled different things such as DVD burning software and anti virus programmes etc that accumulated over the years, deleted a few movies and music, copied all the browser bookmarks and so on but then I found a solution to the printer problem.

So now Im wondering what I should do next. Should I just finish off backing up the various documents and then do a complete reinstall thus ensuring all the different bits of junk are cleared out and Im starting off in the new again or should I just continue on as normal now that the initial printer problem has been resolved?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing a reinstall? Is it worth the hassle really?

Thanks in advance.

johndoe99

a full format/reinstall does bring the PC back to a nice first time state, that is if you have access to all the necessary drivers etc. I'm a Vista user myself, Vista gets slated a lot, but its always been good to me.

If it was my PC, i'd only format/reinstall if there was something seriously wrong, overly slow, that i couldn't fix. Concerning my PC i live by the phrase 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

muffler

johndoe99 wrote: »

a full format/reinstall does bring the PC back to a nice first time state, that is if you have access to all the necessary drivers etc. I'm a Vista user myself, Vista gets slated a lot, but its always been good to me.

A clean slate is good in many things in life and thats why i was considering it. Im not very well up on these things but I do have the original CDs that came with the PC so I assume that would cover most things if I did reinstall. I also assume that there would be loads of MS updates to be downloaded.

johndoe99 wrote: »

If it was my PC, i'd only format/reinstall if there was something seriously wrong, overly slow, that i couldn't fix. Concerning my PC i live by the phrase 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

Good point alright. The system is going well and thats the part thats pulling me in the opposite direction...why do a reinstall when everything is working fine.

I'll have to scratch the head for a while

muffler

Im still studying my options here but I do have another question. Regardless of whether I carry out a reinstall or not Im going to back up some music, pics and videos to a portable hard drive.

I have begun by deleting some of the stuff I will never ever watch or listen to again and while browsing through the various stuff on the PC I came across a folder called AppData. When I open that there are 4 sub folders...Local, LocalGoogle, LocalLow and Roaming. Clicking on any of the 4 sub folders opens a host of other folders.

Altogether the main AppData folder takes up a fairly hefty 12Gb HD space. So a couple of questions on that

1. If I did a reinstall is it necessary to include this folder in the backup?
2. As part of my ongoing "cleaning up / deleting" unwanted stuff can this folder be deleted to free up more HD space?
3, Should this folder be backed up as part of a routine backup?

Slutmonkey57b

These 4 folders are where some of your various applications store their setup information, temporary files, cache, or saved documents.

Generally speaking, you shouldn't delete anything here unless you uninstalled a program and it left something behind.

If you download an app called "Ccleaner" it's very good for clearing out a lot of the junk that accumulates.