Factory reset

[Clapham Saint]

Mrs CS's laptop has ground to a near halt.

It's about 2 years old and the speed is almost certainly down to all the c**p she has installed on it in that time. I've suggested that she do a factory restore (or whatever its called) and reinstall just the things she's actually going to use/need.

This obviously means that I'm going to be the person who actually does the restore and so I'm keen to make sure I minimise the massive amount of aggro which will
come from her losing something that she wanted.

What are the obvious pitfalls?

I will make sure that I back all of her documents ( the "my documents, my music, my pictures etc. folders). I'll need to re-install office but we have a cd for that. Things like firefox and AVG I can download and put onto the portable drive beforehand ready to install.

With office what's the deal on reinstalling? We've had this version for a while and I installed it (and re-installed it) on an old machine of mine which failed. If we have reached th limit on the number of installs do we have to buy again? Surely not?


Sorry a bit of a ramble there but if there's anything obviously that I'm likely to muck up any advice much appreciated.

CS

[Pancake]

AVG might well be the reason it's ground to a halt...

Make sure you save her browser bookmarks too (he says from experience of the ear bashing...)

[Clapham Saint]

AVG might well be the reason it's ground to a halt...

Make sure you save her browser bookmarks too (he says from experience of the ear bashing...)

Good call on the book marks! Thanks

I doubt the speed reduction is (only) down to AVG. She does install an aweful lot of sh*te...

[mdearlove]

I always use http://www.ninite.com to get a single installer for all the different bits and pieces I need when I re-install the OS on my computers. Just browse to the site, click on all the apps you want, then click 'Get Installer' and run the exe. Saves a lot of time

[timebomb]

I always use http://www.ninite.com to get a single installer for all the different bits and pieces I need when I re-install the OS on my computers. Just browse to the site, click on all the apps you want, then click 'Get Installer' and run the exe. Saves a lot of time

What a great site, will definitely use that in future, thanks.

[hutch]

Is the portable drive big enough to back up the whole laptop onto?

If it is, and you have Windows 7, you can create create a "system image" of the entire content of the laptop onto the back up drive. Then, after you have re-formatted and reinstalled the OS, you can "mount" the system image on the portable drive as a VHD (Virtual Hard Drive), and access anything on it to copy it back over to the laptop HDD as required.

I've only done this with Win7, so don't know if it works with Vista or XP.