Clean Install Windows 7 or Registry repair....what hurts least

Con · October 30, 2013, 02:20:37 PM

I am trying to figure out what is the least painful and if I really should do a clean Windows 7 install

My computer is about 4 years old and I have never done anything for upgrades but I am now looking at getting a new graphics card and some more memory. I have been getting some open GL crashes lately with the current video card and latest drivers but rolling them back to an earlier version seems to have fixed it for the time being. I have tried registry cleaners but there always seems to be a lot of junk left.

What has me concerned is the following
1. Reinstalling Norton Anti Virus...this always seems to be a pain in the ass
2. DRM for Battlefront will I have to find and re install all the codes for my battlefront games (I have all the CMBN and CMSF modules)
3. Steam games - how painful is it to put them all back on?
4. Mods for my games - I have sort of saved them to a folder but they are sort of scattered about as well. I would have to re-install them and I have a lot of Mods for CMBN
5. iTunes (I have a terrabyte of music saved on an external hard drive) but do i need to save/backup the library?
6. All the Windows 7 upgrades service packs and patches needing to be applied

All in all I am trying to sort out if the pain of a clean reinstall is worth it since I am sure the system is more flaky then when I bought it but on the other hand it is not crashing all the time either.

What do you guys think?

Thanks
Con

Grimnirsson · October 30, 2013, 02:29:44 PM

Get rid of the Norton shit and have a clean install

Con · October 30, 2013, 02:33:46 PM

I just ponied up for another year of Norton so I am stuck with it until Aug 2014. I never really had a lot of problems with Norton and other programs its more having to reinstall it that has me concerned

Thanks
Con

Grimnirsson · October 30, 2013, 03:04:48 PM

Norton is crawling really deep into your system...and it's not better than some freeware antivirus proggys that don't do that...

GDS_Starfury · October 30, 2013, 03:54:01 PM

do a clean install of everything.
find all the current drivers that you need and put them on a usb stick.
Steam is easier then Mirth on Friday night.
current game mods should also be saved to a usb stick.
no idea about itunes. Ive never had much luck with it.
your looking at around 3 hours from start to finish but the difference will be amazing.

eyebiter · October 30, 2013, 04:50:27 PM

.

GDS_Starfury · October 30, 2013, 04:55:00 PM

^^^ QFT!
Ive had a 500mb WD external for years thats saved my ass on a number of occasions.

like when hamsterhubtube goes down. ::)

Staggerwing · October 30, 2013, 05:26:11 PM

Quote from: GDS_Starfury on October 30, 2013, 04:55:00 PM
like when hamsterhubtube goes down. ::)

I saw what you did there...

mirth · October 30, 2013, 05:49:11 PM

Quote from: GDS_Starfury on October 30, 2013, 03:54:01 PM
do a clean install of everything.
find all the current drivers that you need and put them on a usb stick.
Steam is easier then Mirth on Friday night.
current game mods should also be saved to a usb stick.
no idea about itunes. Ive never had much luck with it.
your looking at around 3 hours from start to finish but the difference will be amazing.

I'd also vote to do a clean install, but 3 hours is a very optimistic, best case scenario. Plan to do it on a weekend and spend most of a day doing it. Trust me, I just did a 'simple' upgrade from OSX 10.6.8 to 10.9 (OSX Mavericks) and it's taken me a week to sort out all the issues. I've had Windows installs/upgrades go sideways too.

And nothing is easier than me on a Friday night. ;)

Grimnirsson · October 30, 2013, 05:59:18 PM

Well, I did a clean install on my NB with W7 recently...copied all files I needed to my external HDD and then re-installed W7...the whole process was about 1h including copying everything from the external HDD back to the HDD on my NB.

Staggerwing · October 30, 2013, 06:34:49 PM

Quote from: mirth on October 30, 2013, 05:49:11 PM
Trust me, I just did a 'simple' upgrade from OSX 10.6.8 to 10.9 (OSX Mavericks) and it's taken me a week to sort out all the issues.

What were the biggest issues with the 10.9 upgrade? I was thinking of making the switch on my iMac soon.

mirth · October 30, 2013, 06:36:28 PM

Quote from: Grimnirsson on October 30, 2013, 05:59:18 PM
Well, I did a clean install on my NB with W7 recently...copied all files I needed to my external HDD and then re-installed W7...the whole process was about 1h including copying everything from the external HDD back to the HDD on my NB.

Hey, it can go right sometimes too. Plan for the worst, then when it goes smoothly enjoy a couple of beers with your free time!

I have say though, considering the applications Con listed - Norton AV, Battlefront DRM, Steam, iTunes w/ a large music library, I'd expect at least a few hurdles to overcome :P

GDS_Starfury · October 30, 2013, 06:40:45 PM

filthy mac people....
you smell of patchouil and drop fleas from your unwashed hippy bodies.
be gone misanthropes!!!

Staggerwing · October 30, 2013, 06:52:15 PM

^Actually, I go both ways. And I've been known to flirt with a Linux distro or two on the side... 8)

mirth · October 30, 2013, 06:55:27 PM

Quote from: Staggerwing on October 30, 2013, 06:34:49 PM
Quote from: mirth on October 30, 2013, 05:49:11 PM
Trust me, I just did a 'simple' upgrade from OSX 10.6.8 to 10.9 (OSX Mavericks) and it's taken me a week to sort out all the issues.

What were the biggest issues with the 10.9 upgrade? I was thinking of making the switch on my iMac soon.

The install got borked somehow. It would recognize my OSX HDD partition. Disk Utility told me it was corrupt and needed to be repaired. Try to repair, tells me it can't be repaired. At that point, if I tried to reboot it would start the Mavericks installer again. Next I tried to restore from an old Time Machine backup, but that wouldn't recognize the OSX partition either. The laughable part was that my WinXP Boot Camp partition was fine and I could still boot into that without a problem.

After many hours and attempts at various things, I ended reformatting the OSX partition and then I was able to restore from Time Machine. Problem is that backup was almost a year old and it took me a few more hours to get things back to something close to what I had. First thing I did after that was to make another Time Machine backup (which required me to reformat the Time Machine drive because that had issues of it's own. I was lucky to get the old backup off it).

Anyway my second attempt at installing Mavericks worked, but there are minor things I've been tweaking since (for example Mavericks doesn't come with Java or Flash and actually removes them from your machine during the upgrade).

Oh and now that Mavericks is installed, my XP partition is giving me problems. I haven't even tried to figure that out yet.