How do I properly copy Windows settings to a new installation?

JemyM

Okay, now roll sanity.
Joined
October 26, 2006
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6,027
Something tells me that I am always doing it the hard way and that I might need to do less if I learned how to at least copy a user from one windows to another.

I will give you a few scenarios:

Harddrive
1. You have a computer with a few extra harddrives to which you can backup data
2. You have a computer with no extra harddrives to which you can backup data

Previous Windows
1. Previous windows still works.
2. Previous windows have failed and wont even boot into fail-safe mode.

Now how can you make absolutely sure your settings are safe and can be restored once you reinstalled windows and what is the easiest way to do so?

What I do
I use a windows version of Ultimate Boot CD, load up a file manager, then I copy the Program Files and the Documents and Settings folder to another harddrive, except for the Adobe and Microsoft Office folder since I have to reinstall those anyway.

Installing Windows XP along with a format takes about 1,5-2 hours.

Once I reinstall everything I have to manually set up Windows again. I have all driver CD's for all my hardware stored as ISO files on my harddrive for quick access.
It's also particulary important I get the nForce drivers installed first since Windows has a potential to crash with wrong drivers. Eventually I also get Service Pack 3 installed. Then I have all favorite software I use properly sorted in a folder on one of my harddrives so I can run them one by one.

While installing my favorite software I copy data from my old folders. Since I moved Outlook, Messenger and ICQ to my laptop I do not really have that much of a hassle restoring settings for programs, but I manually copy Cookies, Desktop and My Documents from my backed up user folder. Then I check Application Data and Local Settings in my old user and "All Users" for gamesaves.
 
Joined
Oct 26, 2006
Messages
6,027
One way to do it is to take an image backup of your system disk. This makes an exact copy of your disk. Then you can if needed restore your system from that, and it will be as it was at the time of backup. I have never tried it myself - I should have.

Here is some information about freely available software for doing that: Free Hard Disk Backup / Restore and Image / Cloning Utilities
 
Paragon Software released a free version of its commercial 'Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 SE' application -- you can download a serial number from the companies website -- and it should do the job nicely as lghartveit described - just install a clean version of Windows with all the drivers, essential programs and settings you want and than clone the partition for later restoration.

I used an older version of the same software for that purpose and can confirm that it works. Of course, now I am using Ubuntu / Linux for almost everything I do and since local settings there are kept in your home partition, reinstalling is quite painless. Unfortunately, Linux is not really a good gaming system ;)
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
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471
Unfortunaly, Windows is the only good gaming operating system.

I used Amiga once. I had the entire system as a .LHA compressed file backupped on another partition. This file could be extracted through the ROM command prompt without even using a bootdisk/bootcd. Too bad you cannot do that as easily with windows. :(

I'll check out the tips you guys gave though.
 
Joined
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