At some point during the course of using your computer, you will find yourself in the unenviable position of having to reinstall Windows. There are many reasons for this. Perhaps important system files got corrupted or disk errors or viruses made your system unstable.

All of this is the result of wear and tear on your PC. When that time comes, you will not only have to know how to reinstall Windows, but also how to reinstall Windows without losing data. Here we are referring to a fresh installation of Windows and not simply an attempt to repair some files.

1. Your provider’s restore CD

The first step in finding out how to reinstall Windows is to locate your vendor’s restore CD, also known as a bootable or rescue disk. Windows also comes with its own rescue CD. If that’s the only one available to you, find the instructions for your operating system below.

Rescue CDs are not all the same. Some provide you with rescue features as well as important software drivers for your computer. Others are more basic and only allow you to reformat your hard drive. Do not format your hard drive without first backing up your personal files to another medium! Your personal files are those found in “My Documents” in Windows. The exact location of your personal files and folders varies from one operating system to another.

In Windows XP, for example, you will back up everything in C: Documents and Settings. In Windows 98 and ME, it will back up C: My Documents. Below are more instructions for your particular system. If you have other folders where you have stored personal things, please make a backup as well.

2. Windows 98 and ME CD

With Windows 98 and ME, you don’t want to simply reinstall Windows without backing up important system information. This information can be found in your Windows folders.

First create a new folder on your C: drive and name it oldWindows. Then use Windows Explorer to navigate to your Windows folder. Once there, locate the following subfolders: All Users, Application Data, Desktop, Favorites, Local Settings, Profiles, Send To and Start Menu. Copy these folders to the old Windows folder that you created.

Now is the time to reboot. Restart Windows with your startup disk. At startup, select Start Computer with CD-ROM Media. The drivers will start to load, so go ahead and insert your Windows CD-ROM.

To reinstall Windows successfully, you will need to delete your directory tree, so type c: windowscommanddeltree / yc: windows and hit the Enter key. After that, you need to invoke the Windows setup installation procedure found on your Windows CD. Type the letter of your CD drive and then type settings.

Then go to the DOS prompt from Windows and type

xcopy c: oldWindows *. * c: windows / s / h / r / c.

This will restore all important system information.

3. Windows 2000 and XP CD

If you have Windows 2000 and XP, you also need to know how to reinstall Windows correctly. Insert your Windows CD and start your computer. Upon startup, you will see Press any key to boot from CD.

After clicking, you will arrive at the welcome screen. Press Enter, then press Escape to initiate a restore. In the menu options, select C as your current partition and then l to delete the Windows folder. Enter temp as your username when prompted. Reboot and it will log in as temp.

You will then restore your personal files. Windows 2000 users must log in as temp, then as administrator, and then back to temp again. Then navigate to C: Documents and Settings and you will see an Administrator folder and one with Administrator: computer name.

From DOS, type cd documents and settings and then hit Enter. Enter xcopy administrator *. * Administrator.computer name / s / h / r / c, replacing the computer name with the folder previously attached to Administrator. Your personal files will be restored.

4. For both Windows XP and 2000

Windows XP and 2000 users need an extra step to know how to reinstall Windows correctly. Create a new folder on your C: drive and label it oldData. Then go to My Documents and Settings and copy all the folders for each username into oldData.

In Control Panel, go to User Accounts and create a new account for each of these users; use their names as detailed in your Documents and Settings folders. If you are using XP, make sure at least one account has administrator privileges.

For each user on your computer, log out and log in with that user’s name. Then log in as Temp and scroll down to the DOS command prompt interpreter. Now write

xcopy c: oldData *. * “c: documents and settings” / s / h / r / c

Then hit Enter. Go ahead and confirm that you want to overwrite files. When you’re done, log out and then log in as each user. Documents and settings for each user must be restored.

5. Finishing

After installing Windows, you must also install other software, such as Windows drivers and updates from the Microsoft website. Check for graphics drivers that you may need to install from a vendor CD.

Search all your old personal files and make sure they are all there. If not, check the C: oldData folder and move the files to the correct location. Once you are absolutely sure you have everything, you can delete both the oldData folder and the Administrator folder.

Conclution

You may have been surprised to learn that you can reinstall Windows without having to erase your hard drive. With a fresh installation of Windows, you can restore your computer to the speed and efficiency it was when you first purchased it.

A fresh installation will do wonders for your computer’s performance and be better for your system than a simple repair. To save your personal files, you simply need to create temporary folders as described in this article and restore them again on the new installation.