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Thread: Reinstalling XP - Jack of all trades needed

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    Reinstalling XP - Jack of all trades needed

    That should really read Jack of all Software needed, but you get the idea.

    I'm thinking of reinstalling XP on my primary system, which has lots and lots of things that I don't want to loose, get screwed up, or even have to mess around much to get working again.

    So I'm looking for advice on a selection of software that I'm going to need to reinstall, and that I'd like to have back up and running at their pre-reinstall settings asap.

    Microsoft Outlook...I've backed up all the emails,contacts, and hopefully calender settings etc through exporting to .pst personal folder files.
    How do you backup all the POP3 connection settings? I've got about 20 email accounts running in outlook and really don't want to have to set each and every one of them up again.

    SQL Server ... I know I can backup the various instances of the dbs I've got stored, but what's the best way to backup everything, including connections so I can just open a file and have everything running again? Or is this being a little bit optimistic?

    Microsoft Visual Studio ... Anyone know if I can just grab the Visual Studio Projects folder from My Documents and then just dump it back after reinstall? Is there anything else that needs to be done for registering projects within the application? What about the link up through IIS? How does one get IIS to pick them up? Just by copying the relevant files into the IIS Inetpub directory?

    Adobe Photoshop Album ... I don't want to loose all the cataloguing I've done for my 20000+ pics, so if there's any files to save it'd really save me some time (about three weeks of tagging)...

    Colour Profiles ... does anyone know if I can just save these and then drop them back? I've got Spyder2Pro so it's no great hastle to recreate the profile, but it'd speed things up if I can just copy them into place...

    I know it's a lot to ask, but I'm already dreading everything going wrong and countless amounts of data going missing. I haven't got another system to test some of the backups on, so I'm a wee bit tense about the whole thing. Any advice would be a good start...
    sig removed by Zak33

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    Quote Originally Posted by ibm
    Microsoft Outlook...I've backed up all the emails,contacts, and hopefully calender settings etc through exporting to .pst personal folder files.
    How do you backup all the POP3 connection settings? I've got about 20 email accounts running in outlook and really don't want to have to set each and every one of them up again.
    to quote someone else:

    Exporting a .pst file doesn't save the email account settings and the workaround from MS is only useful for importing from another program. (not backing up ones that you only have in Office 2003).

    However...
    I did find a solution, which I'm surprised that MS doesn't document more obviously.

    There's a "Microsoft Office 2003 Save My Settings Wizard" in the "Microsoft Office Tools". That will allow you to 'save' and 'restore' all Office settings to and from a file. I tried it and it works fine for backing up email account settings.

    The only disadvantage is that the accounts can't be saved separately. It saves all of them in one file (as well as any other Office settings, I guess). So you'd want to be careful that you're not overwriting recent changes when you use a previously backed up file.

    I don't know whether this works with Office XP or not.

    haven't given it a bash myself, but makes sense to this Jack

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    That looks like it's backed Outlook up anyway....half the headache...ta muchly
    Last edited by IBM; 29-03-2006 at 09:18 AM.
    sig removed by Zak33

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    • IBM's system
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    Really, no more Jacks than that?
    sig removed by Zak33

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    Does the "Files and Settings Transfer Wizard" not grab settings for quite a few things? It's definitely configurable to get particular stuff that you want if you know where the config is kept - I think you can get it to grab particular registry keys etc. if you want as well...

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    Quote Originally Posted by ibm
    SQL Server ... I know I can backup the various instances of the dbs I've got stored, but what's the best way to backup everything, including connections so I can just open a file and have everything running again? Or is this being a little bit optimistic?.
    If the servername is the same after your re-install, connections to your sql db's should be fine. If you're not formatting the drive, you can even just detach the databases (mdf file and ldf file) and reattach from your new install, keeps transaction logs and everything. Usually hidden in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Data or similar.

    Quote Originally Posted by ibm
    Microsoft Visual Studio ... Anyone know if I can just grab the Visual Studio Projects folder from My Documents and then just dump it back after reinstall?
    Absolutely, as long as the relative paths from the proj files to the .sln (solution files) don't change, no problem.

    Quote Originally Posted by ibm
    Is there anything else that needs to be done for registering projects within the application? What about the link up through IIS? How does one get IIS to pick them up? Just by copying the relevant files into the IIS Inetpub directory?.
    Not sure about this, sounds like that would do it. Although what we tend to do is point IIS at the relevant project files when we're developing, and only do the reverse (move project files to inetpub) on released versions. Means you can edit and build, then just hit ctrl-f5 in your browser to test without moving any files.

    Cheers - Andrew
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