Sometimes having to wipe your drive is a blessing in disguise
So you know from my continuing Vista saga that I had to wipe my drive a few times:
Now one positive note on the “clean” install was that while I got a clean install of Vista on my drive, all my old files were saved. Yep, all of them. They were stashed away for me, ready to use and move around. Not bad. Actually, a very nice touch. The installer said that my old copy of Windows would be saved, I didn’t know that this also meant all my other files too. That was a good thing to see.
Source: Pimp Your Work - My Vista saga, part 1
At the end of part 1 I still had files, but by the beginning of parts 2 and 3, I was at a clean slate again. First, yes this could be considered rather inconvenience, but there is a bright side—I had the chance to really pick and choose my applications to reinstall.
Of course one way to do this is to go through the Application Add/Remove control panel and uninstall apps you aren’t using, but the temptation to just leave an app there is really strong. The “oh yeah, that was really cool…” feeling, so you leave it. When you have a clean slate, however, you can’t can’t leave something there, because it isn’t there!
I highly recommend next time you have to wipe your drive (for maintenance or crash) think about what you really need to get your job done. Focus on those apps first. Just wait on the “extras”. Here are my core apps that I need:
- Office 2007. Gotta have it, not question
- Web browser. Yep IE is already there. Hard core Firefox users and Maxthon users will go and download those right away, of course
- IM (Skype and Gtalk … mostly Skype though)
- Blog posting tool. Duh!
- FTP app
- Text editor
- Anti-virus, etc.
That’s really it. That’s pretty much all I need to get 90%+ of my work done. Yeah I eventually download an image editor. Sure I get the Google toolbar and stuff, but do I need then right off the bat? MindManager and Acrobat, those get installed pretty darn fast too.
But the point here, though, is that you can run a cleaner, faster, trimmer system if you don’t just re-download and install everything you had before. Just wait on it a bit. If you need it, you know where to go.
Tags: Software tips, Vista, Windows, XP
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POSTED IN: Software tips, Vista, Windows, XP
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