A Guide For Gamers, Partitioning & Frequent Formats. Options

[Radiation]

I have been working on this for a while. It may have bugs and/or you may choose to do things differently. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY LOST DATA. MAKE A BACKUP OF ALL DATA!!! It works flawlessly for me.

Ok. You've had windows installed on your computer for quite some time. You have installed/uninstalled applications repeatedly. Now windows is starting to become slow. Applications and games take forever to load. The only true solution is a format and fresh install of windows xp. But that sucks because your going to lose all your game data. Savegames, patches, mods etc.. (yes, I know these can be backed up and re-inserted later but why bother). Ok, here is what I did. I used partition magic and divided my hard disk into several partitions. I made C: Windows XP and I gave it 8 gigs to play on. I made D: My Documents drive @ 50gigs. Then I made E: Games @ 25gigs. Ok once you have partitioned all of that, then I inserted my Windows Xp Installation CD*****, and rebooted my computer. Go through all the typical prompts until you get to the partitioning prompt. Make SURE you do NOT delete the partition for Windows XP that you made with Partition Magic. Choose C: and say quick format using NTFS/FAT (Your preference). Once the install completes and windows loads. Install Drivers (Read Footnote). Then Install your games. Install them to E: GAMES. Once you have finished the install, and still have the cd key in hand. Click start>Run>Regedit. (Warning: The registry is critical to windows, do not delete anything unless your sure) After regedit opens either search for the game name, or the cdkey. When you find the registry value containing your key. In the left pane, click on the file and then got FILE>Export. Save it as GAMENAMECDKEY.reg. Save it to E:\GAMENAME. REPEAT for all games you play. NOTE some games do not store cdkey in registry Doom 3 doesn't, and probably more, but COD,UO,2 all do. After you are done installing all games, do a defrag on the partition to clean things up. Then copy all of your mods, and install patches as necessary. Defrag. Ok, now after you are done test everything and make sure all is well. Now your set. The next time windows bogs down, just throw in the cd and reinstall over C: and when your done. Go to you E:GAMES drive and navigate where you saved your GAMENAMECDKEY.reg files, Double-click them, and when it says would you like to import this value into the registry say yes. Now click on your GAMENAME.exe and create a shortcut somewhere you like and launch the game. As long as you don't format the game partition you will not have to install your games ever again.

A quick recap,

I format about every 2 months because I test alot of software.

When my computer gets slow I re-install windows as described and import my cdkey.reg files and I'm up and gaming in less than an hour.

FOOTNOTE. I use an application for slipstreaming called nlite. www.nliteos.com . This is a very powerful application for customizing your Windows Xp install disk. I have all of my hardware drivers slipstreamed into the disk so I don't have to install drivers after a format. If you have questions feel free to post or PM me. As I stated before I am NOT responsible if you erase all of your data. When in doubt, back out.

I hope if you use this you'll enjoy it as much as I do!

Sincerely,

Radiation

[pezking]

I just rip an image of my drive and reimage when needed.... that way Windows is already installed and everything is updated already.

[Stickman]

FOOTNOTE. I use an application for slipstreaming called nlite. www.nliteos.com . This is a very powerful application for customizing your Windows Xp install disk. I have all of my hardware drivers slipstreamed into the disk so I don't have to install drivers after a format. If you have questions feel free to post or PM me. As I stated before I am NOT responsible if you erase all of your data. When in doubt, back out.
[color=#008000][/color]

Woah! Way cool! I do the format/reinstall thing a couple of times a year, whenever the "messed up windows" annoyance factor outweighs the "having to format and reinstall" annoyance factor. Looks like this program will reduce the latter, so I have to put up with less of the former. Thanks!

[Radiation]

Not a problem buddy. I love nlite. Get service pack 2. And goto windows update and check your update history, write down all the KB numbers of the updates, and search them on google. download them all to a folder then open nlite and say "integrate service packs" and "intergrate hotfixes" and that way when you do you install, you will have all the current updates to that date and you can integrate your activation wpa.dbl, and wpa.bak files i think as well. So you won't even have to activate.