Partitioning and Installing Ghosted Drive

[Loose_Moose]

I want to reformat the hard drive in my laptop, but I have a couple of programs that I do not want to lose and I do not have the software. My thought is to remove everything from the drive except the programs that I want to keep, clone the drive, reformat and install the clone on a partition, thus allowing myself to have access to the programs.

[tairua7]

oii have you got a usb or a portable harddrive??

[Steve R Jones]

Can't be done. Most apps copy files to the Windows Folders and write tons of entries to the registry.

[Loose_Moose]

I would ghost/clone the hard drive with the current OS. That's what led to my thoughts for creating a partition to reload the cloned drive with OS and programs that I want.

The only reason I am wanting to do this is because I have a laptop and have not cleaned out the drive in a couple of years. Everything is running relatively well, but I know it can run much faster. I just want to give the insides a good 'scrubbing'. Are there any really good and simple freeware out there that can help me really get my system cleaned out and everything in its right place?

I am hoping to get a new system in a few months after I've saved a little dough. I just need this one to last me a while longer and run at its optimum level.

I do have a 200GB external USB drive.

[RicheemxX]

Cloning the OS in tact pretty much would negate the benefits of doing a fresh install. A fresh install seems to run faster and better because you remove all the old programs, start-up entries and registry entires that are bogging the system down. If you just clone over whats there you are just copying what you have now so it would make any difference.

What you might do is just remove (un-install) all the junk you feel you don't want/need remove any start-up entries you might not need defrag the drive and run a reg cleaner like CCleaner.

Other than that what particular software are you trying to save? Is it that you can't get the software anymore or don't have access to the license keys?

[thephilosophizer]

Agreed, your options are to either clean up your current installation by removing unnecessary programs, and doing things liek reg cleaning and disc defragging. Or, finding the programs your trying to save, and installing new versions.

[Loose_Moose]

Pretty much what I thought. System defrag shows all in good order. Actually says that I do not need to defrag. Is CCleaner easy to use, is it freeware? I don't want to have to go all through searching all sorts of different file extentions that I don't understand and then screw up my system.

As far as Start-up entries goes...where might I find that? Isn't that somewhere in msconfig? Also, do most programs need to load at start-up or can I change them to where they only open when I ask them to?

The software that I don't want to lose are AutoCAD 2009 and Adobe Professional. They are from my last job and I no longer have access to the disks.

[RicheemxX]

Yes CCleaner is freeware and yes it's pretty easy to use Piriform - Download CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva, Speccy - Millions of users worldwide!

I've never ran into any issue removing or 'fixigng' anything that it has found.

As for startup, yeah you can use msconfig to make changes, CCleaner allows you to make changes as well. Before removing or disabling anything you want to check to make sure its not something essential. Using Google and Googling is usually the best bet.

[Loose_Moose]

Looks like I see my path for the next few days. Thanks for your help everyone. It is greatly appreciated. Now off to the other forum to see if I can find any tricks for speeding up my system.

[RicheemxX]

This is a good site for OS related tweaks that will help speed things up Black Viper's Web Site

if there seems to be a major slow down then I'd suggest checking for virus, malware ect. You also want to make sure to remove temp files and what not.

[Loose_Moose]

One last question...I curentlly run Norton, but it seems to be a resource hog. Any good suggestions for a good virus & internet security program that is light on the resources?