Windows reinstall checklist - am I missing anything?

[TheBigCheese]

Well my PC is well and truly knackered...tonight for some bizarre reason it's decided to deauthenticate itself so I'm getting nag screens about it not being genuine software (it blooming well is!), so a reinstall is on the cards for Sunday.

I have a hell of a lot on this computer (not all on the boot drive) so the reason for this thread to make a checklist of all the things that might need to backup before reinstalling, hopefully it'll be useful to someone else as well.

Windows 7 C drive backup -
My docs/pics/games folder
Desktop data
Browser information - favourites / passwords etc
Email
Motherboard drivers
Graphics drivers
Check security software licensing information
Move data from the desktop

Steam...what should I do with that? The games are installed on another drive, do I reinstall Steam and point it at the Steam folder on the other drive?

Any other C drive information that I'm forgetting before I format it?

 

[TheBigCheese]

That's great stuff, thanks very much!

I'm really not wanting to do this, it's my work and games machine all rolled into one and has so many things on it it's unreal.

I was cleaning it out yesterday and removed all the drives, plugged them back in in a different order which was more logical and now every time it boots it installs "volume manager" and wants to reboot...couple that with having six unknown devices in device manager...it's probably all related and I've had enough of it!

 

[TheBigCheese]

Thanks for the reply.

I was thinking of using Clonezilla to make a copy of the drive in case I forget about anything before formatting, is that a better or system than Windows backup?

 

[TheBigCheese]

Windows Backup is fairly solid. You can even mount the .vhd file that it creates and it will appear as a drive under Windows Explorer.

Good grief that's pretty amazing! What would it back up? Is it the full Windows drive or is it Windows and it's associated files/folders, things like the My Docs folder?