Hi all, i would like to do a complete fresh installation of windows on my current computer.

what i would like to find out would be, do i have to format my computer if i want my computer to be fresh(without all the previously installed software and various files), or could i simply just delete all of my current partition, and recreate new partitions ?

Cause i kind of think that deleting partition does kind of "erase" the data.

thank you !

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From a computer security point of view old data can sometimes be recovered if you haven't actually overwritten all of the bytes on the disk.

From a "normal" user's point of view, deleting and recreating a partition starts fresh. It doesn't actually erase the individual bytes in the files on the disk, but destroys system information that allows programs to access the old data. So that's OK for a fresh install.

Regards,

Dave

Thanks. Now i dont have to waste time conducting a format everything i repartition my harddisk

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The installation program should take care of whatever it needs to do, without any extra manual steps from you. After a repartition, there is no file system present, but an operating system "quick format" actually just writes a couple of tables rather than rewriting every byte in the partition.

Regards,

Dave

hmm might i ask how would u normally go about reinstalling a fresh copy of windows ? As in the steps.

like step one back up (duh), followed by maybe fdisk, than str away insert windows CD to install ?

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Step1 is definitely right: back up user data.




It's not worth while backing up applications that will have to be re-installed anyhow. If you have a lot of custom templates that you have created for Word for Windows, for example, you can just back up that directory. Similarly, if you have a lot of bookmarks for your web browser, it's possible to back them up (exact location varies, of course, and you might have to poke around to find them).

As I recall, when you start the Windows installation it allows you to keep present partitions or make new ones and to select which partition to use for the Windows installation itself.

For your consideration for any new Windows Installation: After the installation, I always put my user data into my own directories that are not in the "Documents and Settings" subdirectories that are the usual defaults for most Windows applications. That way, I can reformat the Windows installation partition without killing everything else. (Of course I back them up also, but it's easier to back up things from a separate directory tree rather than having to dig into "Documents and Settings" or, worse than that, under "Program Files" or whatever...

The point being, that sometimes Windows system files (including the registry) get corrupted to the point where recovery is not practical, and you just reformat the Windows partition and do a fresh install.

I have a separate partition (even on a different hard drive, if the system has more than one) that I call home (like Linux) and I put user stuff there. So, if Windows goes onto the C: drive, I usually have something, say F:, where I make F:\home\dave and go from there (F:\home\dave\cprogs, F:\home\dave wwdocs, F:\downloads, etc.)

Anyhow, during the installation, I may just leave some parts of the disk(s) unpartitioned and take care of them later. I let Windows disk manager partition and format NTFS partitions, and if I install Linux later, I let the Linux distribution take care of its /, /boot, swap, etc. partitions. I usually keep a small amount (a few tens of megabytes) for a Windows FAT32 partition to make it easy to transfer modest amounts of data from Windows to Linux and vice-versa. Anything that is left as unpartitioned space can be taken care of with Linux fdisk or Windows disk manager, as the needs arise.

Looking back over this, I see how amazing it is nowadays, compared to only a couple of years ago, to have hundreds of megabytes at my disposal and to have to make decisions like this. Everybody has their own needs and their own ways of doing things.

Regards,

Dave

*smacks head* Hmmm i dint really thought of this before, how ingenious! Previously i was searching fervently for a linux distro that would allow me to install on an NTFS partition(but to no avail till now, somehow linux hates NTFS i guess)

i have always wanted to install linux as well, but i really could not think of any jobs that i can do on linux. can you program win32 apps on an linux OS ? Coz you most certainly could not program win32 or any windows apps on a macintosh computer.

Thanks for your explaination dave btw.

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You can make cross-platform apps using Java, Python, Ruby, C#, et al. You just have to make sure you don't use any libraries or APIs that are OS specific. That way it doesn't matter what OS you're using nor which OS you're coding for.

If you're talking about using C/C++, then it's a little more difficult. Theoritically they're portable languages but you have to compromise quite a bit so you can't use many of the powerful features of a specific OS.

If you want to make .NET apps, look at Mono. It uses C# (mainly) to create .NET runtime compatible bytecode that supposedly can run on either Windows or Linux. There's also supposed to be a VB.NET equivalent for Linux (can't think of the name offhand) and there's also IronPython, which is Python for .NET.

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icic thanks for your input crystalattice

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