To reinstall or repair install Windows XP home?

[A31Chris]

Its been a couple years since I've installed Windows XP on this system. I think time and windows itself is catching up with it. Sometimes I'll get freeze ups and periodic blue screens. They seem to come from/caused by the Nvidia graphic card drivers. When I dont do the Nvidia installs exactly per the hoop jumping instructions and just have it 'install' I get more of these occurances. When I finally go 'fine' and jump through the hoops and really clean the system first and see to ti the AV is off when installing, the drivers and XP seem to work a lot better. I learned the hard way its an absolute MUST to disable any AV during installing Nvidia graphic drivers.

I think I rambled a little bit there but was figuring maybe just the wear and tear on XP files maybe its time to either do a complete re-install or a repair install.

I have also noticed that since I run around mostly in a non-admin enviroment, my need to re-install windows is severely reduced compared to those who run around all the time in admin profiles. Regardless of whether they seem to be infected with this that and the other or not.

ok so question. What do you guys suggest? A repair-install or a complete redo of the Windows drive?

[dneilson]

You have nothing to loose (except some time) by trying the Repair Install first. Then, if it's not running to your satisfaction do a fresh install.

[jdc2000]

Also, on the video drivers, the latest version may not necessarily be the greatest version, especially if you are using an older card. If you have a version that works without issues, that would be the ont to stay with unless you really need a fix or enhancement that a newer version offers.

[A31Chris]

Also, on the video drivers, the latest version may not necessarily be the greatest version, especially if you are using an older card. If you have a version that works without issues, that would be the ont to stay with unless you really need a fix or enhancement that a newer version offers.

I think you're exactly right. My card is a couple years old (Nvidia 450gts) and none of the new enhancements in the drivers lately seem to apply to it. I am thinking about going all the way back to version 266.x which seems to run great.

[A31Chris]

You have nothing to loose (except some time) by trying the Repair Install first. Then, if it's not running to your satisfaction do a fresh install.

Will all games and applications need to be reinstalled once I do the repair install? Or will it keep most of those DLL's and setting with a minimum of fuss?

[dneilson]

You will not loose the things you installed, it just repairs the OS.

[A31Chris]

Looking over the repair instructions online. I saw that it will re-ask how many users will be on this computer after doing the repair install. Will I lose any additional profiles I have created, with everything that is saved or kept on them? Such as this one I'm in now which is a non-adminstrator profile?

[jdc2000]

Your user profiles should be retained, provided you are not changing the computer name or something else that might cause Windows to think they need to be re-entered. See the links below.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic274555.html

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&o...w=1112&bih=780


It might be worthwhile to make an image backup of your current system, just in case, before doing either a Repair Install or a clean install.

[A31Chris]

Well as I stated I wanted to do a repair install and go back to Nvidia driver 266.x. I wanted to remove the latest one, 310.x something or other. I think its second to latest as of this posting. Anyways I had a hell of a time. Nvidia forums recommended steps for a clean driver install involves deletng the Nvidia folder from the root directory of the hard drive. Well I've done that tons of times. This time however, this latest build put something in there I could only get out while in safe mode. So that done I went ahead and began the repair install. Unfortunately it stuck something in somewhere that the repair install detected that wanted the new hard to remove file I had just yanked. The repair install froze up. After repeated attempts something got corrupted and I wasn't even able to perform a standard install over the old copy of windows. I would of had to reformat. Since I had stuff on the driver I did not want to lose I yanked it and put in my spare drive and did a fresh install on that. I'll have to recover those files at a later time. Thanks Nvidia! Jackasses.

[A31Chris]

Well my system does run real well now. Must of been some kind of memory leaks occuring somewhere along the way. Its a bit faster now than it was. No there were not any viruses/malware on it.