Yesterday I rebuilt a domain controller, and that night, I felt like rebuilding my computer from the OS up. I’ve been having allot of problems with Windows hanging at the logon screen, the display going out on the monitor, etc, and I had had, just enough, so last night I backed up a few things, threw in the WinXP SP2 disk and started fresh.
Issues that forced the reformat
- Too much clutter. After 18 or so months, there is just too much clutter on my machine. Too many utilities not used anymore. I’m almost to the point of using VM’s for most stuff. I will probably look to that with my next desktop purchase, which will hopefully take place next year.
- Video Card Driver Issues: I hadn’t updated by video card drivers in quite some time. The first update I applied about 1 month ago, and it messed up the resolution on my 2nd monitor. It was showing 1280×1024 instead of 1440×980. About 1-2 weeks ago, NVidia came out with Beta drivers for all the new games coming out. Hoping to fix my screen resolution issues, I installed them. About that same time I installed Kaspersky anti-virus, and between the two of them, started having various problems, which I blame mostly on Norton not uninstalling properly.
- Attempted to remove Norton in favor of Kaspersky. (See Above)
Backup
- I keep all important data on 2nd hard drive, so that when I do reformat, I don’t have to do much.
- IE Favorites, stored at c:\documents and settings\User\ were synced using folder share, now synced using groove.
- Groove Account: Since I have the same account on multiple computers I didn’t really need to back it up, but it was easier to do so. Just export your account from Groove.
- SyncBack Profiles
- IE/Outlook Feeds: C:\documents and settings\adams\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Feeds
Decisions
The only real decision was to go Vista (and if I went Vista, go 64 bit). I have been running Vista on my laptop for over 6 months now, so I do have a bit of experience using it, and could make a fair comparison between XP and Vista. In the end I decided to go with XP SP2. I don’t have more then 4GB of Ram, nor do I have a DX10 video card, so I didn’t feel as if Vista gave me anything more at this time. I plan on making the switch to Vista when I upgrade the desktop machine next year sometime. That will also be the point at which I switch over to 64 bit, as I intend to be running 4GB+ of ram.
Process
- Backup
- Insert XP SP2, and reboot. Press F8 to access boot menu and select DVD-Rom drive
- Wait for XP Setup to load
- Realize that the drive letting is messed up due to a HD on the ATA interface.
- Shutdown PC
- Unplug ATA HD
- Start back at Step 2
- Drives are now correct. Select C drive, delete partition and reformat.
- Windows Installs
- Time Zone
- Network Settings (Set to Static)
- Can’t join the domain because no drivers for the NIC
- Windows is now installed
- Install latest NVidia drivers, verify resolution on 2nd monitor is correct (check)
- Install Kaspersky, verify startup problems are gone (check)
- Install latest sound card drivers
- Install latest chipset and device drivers for on board devices, like the NIC (check)
- So far, no problems
- Enable remote desktop, join domain, add domain user account to Users group
- Windows Updates, including .Net Framework 2.0,3.0, IE7, WM11, and all updates
- Start installing software
Synchronization
- Getting grove set back up was pretty easy, although not as easy as I had hoped. While the account settings were backed up, which included the workspaces, the locations on where those workspaces should be located was not. It was pretty easy to choose the correct location, but once you get to 10+ work spaces it could be kind of a pain
- Added IE Favorites to synchronization. Instead of looking for the favorites folder in explorer, in Groove, go to Options/Preferences/Synchronization and check the box for Internet Explorer Favorites
- Ran into my first limitation with Groove. I wanted to try to sync my RSS feeds, but when I selected the feeds folder, I got a warning directing me to the Groove help topic on WorkSpace restrictions. Those restrictions basically said, the feeds folder (too many files and folders), and my MP3 folder (too many files, and my root mp3 folder would be > 1GB) are not Groove friendly. It looks like I may need to keep folder share around.
What’s Left?
- More software, such as Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2
- Organize Start Menu
- Install Steam and TF2, hopefully stuttering issue is gone
- Install Printer and Scanner Drivers. Hopefully network printer sharing issues have been resolved
- Backup strategy
- Feed synchronization strategy or software application