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I have a Dell XPS Gen 3 computer with Windows XP, Media Center Edition, Service Pack 2, Pentium 4 CPU, 3.4 GHz, 1.00 GB RAM that is about two years old. This computer has been causing me a few problems lately, mainly with CD and DVD players not working properly. Dell tells me that with the Media Center Edition you need to reinstall it about every 18 months to get the system back to like new. Problem is, you lose all your files etc.

So, I went to Best Buy and purchased a Western Digital, My Book Essential, 160 GB, External Hard Drive. I have a 250 GB hard drive on the Dell with 106 GB used.

My question is - What do I need to move to the external drive to save while I reload the Dell unit? Do I just copy the whole C drive or what so I can save the FS9 and PROPS files that I use daily along with my photos and music?

My thinking currently is that I need to move the My Documents folders and My Photos then reinstall and then spend lots of time reloading the programs I have added since I purchased the computer. Is that generally it?

Any help you can offer will be greatly appreciated.

OUCH ! this doesn't sound promising lazyeight

just for the sake of argument as the shout of doing a format C is the easyest way out but brings a lot of work and time consumption with it, did you by any chance run a check disc for the C partition or any other partitions for hat matter ??

if you open up explorer and right click the particular partition, there should be a tab called extra for selecting this, check both items and restart the puter, it can take a while but it still beats re-installing the whole thing.

good luck


fled

Thanks Fled,
I ran chkdsk on C and it made several repairs. But one problem I have is that I cannot record tv shows like it is supposed to. After chkdsk it still will not record them.

Dell said somewhere along the line it became corrupted and the only way to repair it is to reinstall the os, so I think I am still stuck with this solution.

Thanks though for the suggestion.

sorry to hear that didn't do the trick for you lazyeight

I would backup your complete fs9 and fs9AR install and also the folders where your cfg files are

then when you reinstall fs9 plus the 9.1 patch, after that you can completely copy it back on your puter and you'll be up and running with fs9 and fs9AR in a jiffie

As for the rest it's hard to say as all proggies you may have installed need to be re-installed
make backups of your data, my documents, etc etc.

once you get it up and running again, give me a buzz and we can sort things out.
GL
fled

Will do. Thanks Fled.

A tip that everyone should know when doing a XP reinstall is where your program(s) information is installed. If you back up and reinstall this folder after your programs are reinstalled, you won't loose any information. FS9 also has your FS9 config file in this folder. Back up this folder.. "Application Data" located...

C:\Documents and Settings\your computer name\Application Data

If you don't have your folder options set to 'view all folders', you won't see it. You can set this option in your control panel.

Windows Media Edition is giving users a bunch of problems, I would suggest XP Pro...