Planning on reformatting my PC

[chrisxuk]

Hi, and merry christmas to you all.

Over the christmas holidays I thought I would reinstall XP onto my computer. Just wondering what the best way to do this would be. Programs I can download and install again, it was more games and save files and My documents that I am more curious about.

Is it just a matter of copying and pasting everything in My Documents over to to an external HDD? And games, can I just copy the save files and then install the games again and put the save files in place? Also, one last thing. Got a few games that i've downloaded from Steam, can I download these again once i've reinstalled?

Thanks, and hope that all makes sense

 

[Yakyb]

its simple really most games store there saves in my documents so create a Backup of that some where (i hope you where doing this already) others do sometimes store them in there own directory soi would hunt out any you cant find in my documents in there (just make a small note of the directory structure).

steam will let you download the games again no problem (thats the whole point really)
although it is possible to backup your game files on steam i think you just right click on the game in the my games tab but ive not experimented much with this.

one small point when restoring your old things try to only take things you definitely need, half the benefit of a reinstall is that it makes everything clean again no need to make it untidy again with all your old stuff.

 

[Fegruson]

I would copy the game directories as well. It's possible the saved game information is stored in there. Then reinstall the game, it will "merge" the folders and overwrite old files, not including the save games.