Okay, I did not even try to install Vista, let alone Windows 7. I just tried a plain vanilla reinstall of Windows XP Pro, and it has taken the better part of a week to reconstruct my computing environment. And yes, I do have a Mac! My Mac is the all-important second PC. If it weren’t for clients needing me to work with their Windows QuickBooks and Quicken files, I would gladly have switched to the Mac as my computing platform long ago.
realize that remote backup software like Carbonite will try to restore EVERYTHING, including all of the crapola stuff you don’t want copied back to your nice clean PC, and that manually selecting what you want to restore via the remote backup is time consuming and error prone–better to just save the folders you really want to an external drive and then copy those back,
store your QuickBooks file in the same folder structure as client files–totally forgot it was in a different place and wiped it out,
sigh with relief that you remembered to back up QuickBooks to an external drive each and every time you used it,
don’t bother wasting time uninstalling each application before reinstalling Windows, just be sure to locate all product ids, codes, etc. before uninstalling, as these numbers usually can be obtained from the software as long as it remains installed,
upgrade Windows to the latest Service Pack before reinstalling applications requiring it,
make a note of the router password–this is different in some cases than the password needed to add a PC to the wireless network, e.g., in the case of Netgear,
be thankful that you were able to remember the router password after trying about 10 different ones so you didn’t have to reset the router back to its factory default settings,
remember that running Windows via Parallels on the Mac is not the same as running Windows on a dedicated Windows machine. There are known issues and I’ve experienced problems such as no file sharing or printing via the wireless network, applications not working as expected, and so on.
No, not because it’s really cool to listen to the Half Life video game Hazardous Environment (HEV) Suit voice on two PCs at the same time (although that may be a side benefit for gamers).
My Windows XP installation has reached its half-life. (You do know that Windows has a half-life, don’t you? Every installation of Windows naturally degrades along a logarithmic curve until it becomes annoying, then unbearable, then unusable. Each successive revision of Windows has featured a slightly longer half-life. Back in the day, Windows 95 would last me about 3 months, while my copy of Windows XP has lasted me almost 9. I’m not bitter; when you realize that you’re measuring on a logarithmic scale, a factor of 3 improvement is really quite impressive.)
Let’s assume that like me, you’ve noticed that your Windows computer is getting sluggish. In my case, I noticed my Windows XP Pro computer was getting slower and slower over the course of a few months. I tried a memory upgrade, and that seemed to help, but only for awhile. Go2Guy Consulting Services recommends trying the following steps before giving up and re-installing Windows. I tried some of those, plus purchased and installed Registry Mechanic 9.0 to run diagnostics, clean up the Windows registry and minimize Windows services. Not much improvement.
Then this week, in the peak of tax season with clients needing me to be able to efficiently transfer QuickBooks and Quicken files back and forth from PC to USB flash drives, I noticed that flash drives plugged into one of the front 2 USB ports didn’t always work. I would get an occasional Windows Write error. Usually plugging the same flash drive into a USB port in back solved the problem.
But on Tuesday, a ScanDisk drive didn’t work in the back USB port either. I was able to copy some files, then the drive would disappear from MyComputer, so I would unplug/replug the ScanDisk to copy some more files till it disappeared again. Repeat till all files copied. Meanwhile, the day before, I’d imported a CD from the DVD Drive into iTunes—an audiobook—and the import went ok, but in listening to the files, one of them had an echo effect like the reader was stuttering, or like an old LP that skips. I recopied (via the ScanDisk) and the audio files are fine now, so it seems the main DVD drive isn’t working either.
Going back even earlier in time, at some point last year, I lost the ability to write to blank CDs using the DVD-RW drive, e.g., couldn’t burn discs from iTunes via that drive.
Fast forward back to today. When a Windows installation reaches its half life, the best remedy is a clean re-installation of the operating system, and this process goes much faster with two PCs because you can move all critical data and applications to one PC while you prepare the afflicted PC for a reinstall.
At this point, assuming you’ve had the foresight to own two PCs, you might consider the following strategy:
move critical data to the backup PC via a USB flash drive or external hard drive,
move critical applications you use every day such as email, Microsoft office, etc. to your backup PC,
move any other data and applications you need to continue your daily work-flow on the backup PC,
slowly uninstall applications from the afflicted PC one at a time as you have time, taking care to list each application and to locate its original software CDs or download URLs and product ID codes so that you can efficiently reinstall it later, and
take this opportunity to eliminate applications you no longer use and don’t wish to reinstall–locate and discard corresponding CD and product manuals.
Once you uninstalled all of the applications, you’re ready to reinstall Windows. If you’re able to quickly locate your official Windows installation CD, you get a gold star.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonasj/ / CC BY 2.0
After you reinstall Windows, reinstall your applications and move your critical data back to your regular PC. Or, maybe not. Maybe this is a good time to reconsider work flows. For example, if your 2nd (backup) PC is a laptop, maybe you’d rather keep email on the laptop so you can process email on the go.
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Note: donations to the Red Cross for Haiti made through the Grand Circle Foundation will be matched 100%.
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