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General discussion

Final Preparations: What files should I copy from my existing system. . .

Dec 7, 2003 1:22AM PST

Some of you moderators may remember my posts over the past six months about evaluating new systems on a tight budget, because I was going to purchase a new one and pass on my PIII 384mb RAM Dell to my kid for XMas. After all that research, Dell actually came through with some sweet deals on PIV hyperthreads that I jumped at. It will be here in a few days, so. . .

I'm now cleaning out my existing system, doing everything OTHER than a complete XP reinstall (I've tweaked it so much over the years I've forgotten what I've done!). However, I will probably uninstall every other application except Explorer and reinstall only necessary ones like MS Office---and also not re-install any P2P software. I also will clear it of all spyware, and clean out my registry as much as safely possible--even though yesterday doing so crashed my virus checker and possibly my cd burning software (I've since corrected the problem).

1. Other than a complete reformat, what do you guys suggest as a systematic process of prepping a system?
2. Most important. My kid lives a 100 or so miles away, and may not be as swift on troubleshooting problems. WHAT FILES SHOULD I COPY AND KEEP WITH ME AS CONFIGURATION FILES IF HIS COMPUTER GOES HAYWIRE? I guess I'm envisioning burning some kind of disk or keeping some type of settings log so if he calls and sez Explorer's not working, I can assist him.

current system specs: PIII 866mhz, 384MB RAM, 32 MB video card, 40GB HD, 1.1 & 2.0 USB(PCI card), XP Pro. Dell.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Final Preparations: What files should I copy from my existing system. . .
Dec 7, 2003 2:33AM PST

My advice would be to backup any important documents and such you do not want to loose and then do Complete "clean" install. Anything short of this is asking for problems. I would also be sure to set NTFS as my file system. Also, even if only 1 user, be sure to setup a Administor account so your prepared if/when problems arise. Good Luck

Richard

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Re:Final Preparations: What files should I copy from my existing system. . .
Dec 7, 2003 4:23AM PST

If I read you correctly...you want to be able to help your kid out if the PC is down?

Since it's running XP the easiest is to create a restore point when all settings & software are installed and the PC is running smoothly.

This way if things go wrong just instruct the user to restore back to that point.

There is not much point in doing a backup of files & settings as your son/daughter has not started using the PC and no personal data has been created.

But once he/she has started accumulating files then you can show them how to backup their files.

Or give them the link to this site!

Or if your new PC is using XP Pro you can set up Remote Desktop and use that to maintain or fix their PC problems.

Another alternative is to make an image of the drive using Ghost.