Windows install question....

[Tumble]

If I have 1 physical drive, organised into 3 primary partitions, with one of those being a system partition and EVERYTHING else split over the other 2 partitions, so that there's nothing but Windows on that 'system' partition, will I be able to, providing I back all the relevant application data, simply be able to reinstall Windows on that partition, and still be able to access the data and use the programs on the other partitions once I've restored the backup?

[francium]

Accessing your data shouldn't be a problem, however I am not sure whether certain programs will cease to work due to their registry edits being erased should you reinstall Windows. I myself use two partitions, one for data and one for Windows / programs, as I have always been under the impression that it is not recommended to try and install programs on another drive partition with the intent to reinstall Windows during this time. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Tumble]

I thought that might be the case - I'm not bothered about reinstalling stuff like Firefox and my games and things - it's the setting up that's easy with the backups - I was just worrying about the mountain of stuff that I want to continue accessing after re-installing.

[Zak33]

Tumble......the games will prolly all be fine.

IL-2, CoD4 both will, definately. I have back up's of both on my USB Hard drive and I just copy them over to use...in fact IL-2 RUNS OFF A USB HARD DRIVE if I need it too

SO LONG AS YOU USE THE SAME SATA DRIVERS...ie the ones from the XP SP2 disk that you used last time

[patch]

If you do a system state backup, you should be able to restore it onto a fresh windows install and still access any programs that refer to the registry (as that's what a system state backup does!

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../cc781353.aspx