Reformatting Windows XP Partition

[TooOneBee]

I have 3 partitions; C, D, and F, with only an OEM version of XP installed in C, which has 14GB capacity. The rest of my programs, games and softwares are installed in my D drive.

I want to just reformat my C: and do a clean installation of XP. What would become of the programs affected, those which stores inself into the registry. Where can i check this list of programs (e.g. Norton, Expert Tool?) Do i have to uninstall these programs before doing the reformat, and if not, will they be usable after the reformat?

I also have several SDKs such as Sun's J2SDK 1.4.2 and editors like the WTK and JPadPro. What would happen to the environment variable and class paths of the SDKs if i reformat XP? Again, do i have to uninstall these programs first before reformatting?

Sry for the nub qns, never tried reformatting just 1 partition before.

[I.M.O.G.]

You should not manage this this way. There are better ways of doing what you want to do.

Basically, almost every program stores information, setup, and configuration stuff in the registry and reformating your system partition will not play nice with those changes.

You could always export your registry now and import it after the fresh install, however I think this is the worst option and it will likely lead to problems (half the point of doing a fresh installation is cleaning up a registry which is fubar anyway).

There is a basic problem with how your data is partitioned currently - seperating your programs and OS creates a lot of travel for the R/W heads which will slow things down when you use your PC. You would be much better to install all of your programs on the OS partition - keep a seperate partition for My Documents and other DATA you produce. This way, the OS files and the program files are right next to eachother and your seek times under normal conditions should be less, and most importantly, when it becomes time to format or reinstall - all of your DATA is seperate and safe.

Now you probably don't want to have to install all your programs after reinstalling windows. You should get some imageing software and build an image of your system partition. After a fresh install, you can load all your drivers, and load all your essential programs, then create an image which you save to one of your non-system partitions. The next time you need to do a fresh install, you just perform a disk from image transfer and this will write that fresh image back to your system partition - no configuring programs, no configuring windows, all of the updates and changes you built into the image are automatically there.

Using image software to save yourself the trouble is much better than trying to hack together an install the way you are trying to.