Another Reinstalling Vista Question

right i have been busy getting all the stuff i need (i hope) from my comp to one of my other drives - it seems as though i can only do a complete reinstall of vista, could it be because im going from 32bit to 64bit?

any my question is this: is it required that i unstall all my games and apps before reinstalling vista?

 

No. You will have to reinstall all of your games and apps aftwards, though.

 

yeah i know about having to reinstal games and apps, but i heard people lost activations for some games, such as Spore and for Itunes

 

Then that would be an application-specific issue; it's certainly not a general rule of thumb. Were I you, I'd check with the makers of the apps I'm not sure of and ask them specifically whether or not you need to do an uninstallation prior to reinstalling your OS in order to save your activation.

 

well i dont have that many games:

Supreme Commander
Crysis
Football Manager 2008
FEAR Platnum
Stalker

i havent heard anything about the DRM for them, but ill uninstal lthem anyway - just to make sure

 

Spore is a rented game. You get 3 installs and then have to pay (via a high price phone call) to get 1 and only 1 more activation from EA, you cannot undo an install to recover an install either . This is the reason I only installed it on my desktop and have had to go and find other ways to install it on my laptop (if you know what I mean).

As for iTunes. Before uninstalling goto "store" > "De-authorise Computer", this removes the DRM licence from your computer and hands it back to Apple allowing you to reload windows with a new version without reducing your limits. Then when you have re-installed iTunes do the same again but choose "Authorise Computer" to re-instate the licence. I have had to do this a few times but you do get 5 computers you can use at once if you forget.

 

why is it limied (itunes)?
will i still be able to play my pc games on 64bit as ive heard some games have problems - 2 apps that i would like / need dont seem to work on vista ultimate 64bit Yet, so i am just have to "fix" vista for now and wait until i know for sure they work

 

What apps don't work on Vista 64? I use Vista 64 on both my laptop and desktop as both have 4GB of ram. There are some work arounds for unsigned drivers etc and some companies have taken drivers from small software producers and signed them for them.

iTunes is limited to stop people from giving away their user name and password to a friend and letting them have access to all the purchased music. At least they understand that a PC needs to be reloaded sometimes and allow you to recover the licence and move it to a new install / new PC (if you use all 5 up you can wipe all issued licences and get another 5 back but its limited to only clearing out once a year). EA on the other hand thinks that you never need to reload a PC and if you do they want you to buy another copy of the game, they also don't want you selling the game on when you have finished it. (if you can't tell I am a bit annoyed with them and will not be buying any more EA software until they remove this stupid limit).

 

from what i know pcsx2 doesnt work, rocketdockdoesnt work and a couple of others.
it doesnt matter anyway as iwent ahead and insatlled 64bit, just trying to get the intel matrix driver to install, keeps saying no device found