anyone used partition magic?

My question is, if I split up the partitions and put all my programs in one partition, can I reinstall windows without having to reinstall everything?

basically... if I were to put everything into one partition, and have my operating system on another, and reinstall windows on the partition with windows on it. would that require me to reinstall every program?


thanks

 

Many programs want to be installed in the windows directory.

 

so what would you recommend me doing if I needed to reinstall windows, but don't want to go through the hassle of reinstalling all of these programs.

i have partition magic 8 full version along with norton ghost if this helps. Thanks a bunches!

 

You'll need to re-install most of your software. A lot of software uses the Windows registry to work properly. A new install of Windows will not have these registry entries and your software won't work properly.

 

You MUST re-install all programs no matter what. What you gain by partitioning your drive is: If your data is a partion other than the "C" drive it is preserved if you need to reinstall the os (if you do it correcrly). Another benefit of partitioning is faster searaches and data access but you probably won't be able to notice this.

 

Like everyone said, there is no way of getting around reinstalling your software. When you install something, even if you tell it to put the folders on another partition, it still installs registry keys in your XP partition.

The only way you can avoid it is to reformat and install all the software that you want. Get your XP set up the way you want and then make an image of it using Norton. This way in the future, you won't have to reformat or reinstall the programs. All you'll need to do is place the image you made with norton back on the HDD and it will change your hdd back to that image.

The only downside is if you add any software after making the image, you will lose this software once you put the image back on there.

 

alrighty guys, thanks for the responses.

-Hero

 

actually, i remember jalf saying something about junction points and trcking something into. I dunno, ask jalf

 

The only way I know how to do that is with a drive image as Southern Girl mentioned. But make sure everything you want is on there and nothing you don't want before making the image.

 

I used partiton magic once, it had an 'error' and wiped my hard drive with only a tiny fraction of the data on it being recoverable.

Thanks muchly partition magic.