I think I am finally ready to reformat my computer. I have been scared to do it because I don't want to lose any files, but I think I have backed everything up I need to. I have backed up my documents, pictures, music, video's, Outlook files, and bookmarks (I think). Is there anything else I might want to back up? I'm definitely going to reformat my C drive, but I am thinking I might do my D drive as well. D just has a few music files and such on it so I think it's safe to nuke it. D is partitioned and has a "recovery drive E." I'm guessing I should leave the E drive alone, but if I do reformat D, will that affect E? Should I reformat D first, then C? Oh, about how long will this take to reformat and reinstall Vista using the HP recovery disk? I think this is the order I will reinstall programs: MS Office Professional 2007 all of the driver updates and windows updates Kaspersky Anti-Virus my documents and all Firefox and any other small extra program I want until I get Windows 7 Does that seem like a good order? Sorry for all the questions, I've never reformatted by myself. I've always had other people do it for me, but I feel like I know enough now to do it properly. I'm still just scared I might lose things. Thanks TechForge!
You should probably do #2 before doing #1. You should probably go into your Add/Remove programs and see which applications you use the most, and make sure you have a way to get them all back, whether you have an installer file, can download it easily, or have the backup CD.
Ok, sounds like a good plan. I don't anticipate that it will be hard to get all of the other programs back on. I have an Adobe Suite, but it's old and super out of date. If it doesn't work, I'll just get another one with my awesome student discount!!
