Karl Gottshalk wrote:

> If you kill all of the windows files (including registry, etc) and do a
> reinstall, what difference does it make if you format the drive or not.
> Admittedly you will still have to reinstall most of your apps to get them
> working properly.
>

Straight to the point, when you do deltree \windows, you will not likely to kill
all config files, some apps have their own config files (not just registry) and
god knows where they keep 'em and how they work. However if you deltree all your
apps and windows, plus all folders/files they use, you sure will kill 'em all,
but what difference it makes then? To do a deltree, you still need to reinstall
all your apps, plus risk by the possibility to use their old (possible trouble)
configs.

If you have large data without backup, do a "deltree all" without touch data
files is the best way to go. it will give you same result as a clear
reinstallation (not including disk fragment - you will likely to have disk
fragment by deltree with large data left on harddisk).

J Qian

            PCBUILD maintains many useful files for download
              on our web site - visit our download page at:
                     http://nospin.com/pc/files.html