Getting back files after reinstalling windows.....

I just did a complete reinstall of windows XP. Is there a way that I can recover all of my stuff without having to reinstall. I.E.- M$ Office and Photoshop 7? I doubt it, but hey, it could happen.

Nope

Did you format? If so, they're gone.
If you did a reinstall without a format, then no, you can't get the remaining files that were left behind to work (esp. not Office or IE), because they are missing registry entries, and anything they added to the OS, or it's directories.

Without Norton Ghost or similar utilities, you're pretty much SOL. If your data is really that important, I suggest you buy one of those apps (newegg has old systemworks for cheap). If you've got a backup copy of your registry, you could throw that on there, but if you reformatted because of a problem, that probably isn't the wisest thing you could do.

Z

zachj said:

Without Norton Ghost or similar utilities, you're pretty much SOL. If your data is really that important, I suggest you buy one of those apps (newegg has old systemworks for cheap). If you've got a backup copy of your registry, you could throw that on there, but if you reformatted because of a problem, that probably isn't the wisest thing you could do.

Z

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Ghost won't help you migrate programs, you need something like Cleansweep. The "Archive" and "Transport" options will export the installed registry entries and all the DLLs that it installed into one package, and allow you to install it on other machines.

I know that Ghost won't do that. I was just telling him of some of the options that there are for him to take. Personally, I think the best option is the verbatim copy of teh hard drive. Least effort, best results, and easy as hell.

Z

zachj said:

I know that Ghost won't do that. I was just telling him of some of the options that there are for him to take. Personally, I think the best option is the verbatim copy of teh hard drive. Least effort, best results, and easy as hell.

Z

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I did that a while back, when I used 98, but now that I'm on 2k, I don't reformat as often, and when I do, I don't mind reinstalling everything manually... i found that too much changed between the image snapshot and the reinstall.. hardware changes, program installations, etc etc. I use ghost at work, works great there, but I don't think it has a place in my tiny network anymore.

I can see your point. Even with a Ghost image sitting on your disk for emergencies, you'd still want to back up your files so you don't loose 'em, which sort of defeats the purpose of having made the Ghost image in the first place.

Z

zachj said:

I can see your point. Even with a Ghost image sitting on your disk for emergencies, you'd still want to back up your files so you don't loose 'em, which sort of defeats the purpose of having made the Ghost image in the first place.

Z

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Actually, a ghost image would be good if I needed a production system up and working again with only a few minutes downtime. Since my system's hardware changes frequently, and I dont' format that often, there is alot of slack between the image and where my computer is at format time. I find that it's better for the system to just do a format, and then reinstall from scratch, then do all the updates and install programs. It gives the "fresh" system feeling.

I have my important files full backup to another machine on site daily, and incrimental backup offsite daily, with full backup on weekends. This is about 400 megs or so of documents and misc school work.