Can I save my Programs and transfer them back into a clean install?

Question

Yes I need help here. I want to back up all my programs onto an external hard drive and then clean install the operating system. Is there any way to do this. Do I need a program if so which one?

Answer 1

Because most Windows programs rely on the registry of Windows it's not possible to do a clean install and still use the installed programs you have from a previous install. You need to install these programs with the Add & Remove Programs app or from their installer EXE for them to work properly. The best way to "clean install" and still have your programs installed right away is to clone your hard drive at the point where you have everything you'd want installed installed. What this does is take an exact copy or snapshot of your drive as you want it and duplicates it on another hard drive. The most popular program to do this with is Norton Ghost. The best time to use this program is when you've clean reinstalled the OS, update the OS through Windows Update, and then reinstall all the programs you know you want from the get go, then you clone the hard drive. So if anything goes wrong, then you have a hard drive ready to to be swapped in or a hard drive you can clone from, and on and on.

In Mac OS X it's easier and this is probably where people get the idea that you can simply move programs from a Windows computer to an external hard drive. All programs since the old System days have been self contained files that don't need installation unless they need drivers installed and in most cases a first run of those programs will install the necessary files. Same for any PKG files. In Mac OS X these self contained programs reside in special folders with an APP file extension. ex: Firefox.app. The only crucial files that needed to be saved were Preference settings files. In pre-Mac OS X days it was in the Preferences folder in the System folder. In Mac OS X I think the settings are kept somewhere in the Library folder or in the Documents folder in the home directory. Anyway, all you have to do is copy the Applications folder to a location of your choosing (external hard drive, thumb drive, etc) and copy any needed settings or preferences file. Then you copy them back after a clean install of the OS is done.

In Linux everything is handled by a package maintainer like Synaptic Package Manager or sudo apt-get install [program name]. In this case all you have to do is know the name of the program and install it. All you have to do is copy the folder with the settings in it usually hidden in the user's home directory with the file name preceded by a period. ex: .foldername In this case it's even easier to back up than either Windows or Mac OS X because all you have to back up is the user's home folder and when you remember to install the apps needed your settings are already there waiting to be used.

In all cases you may even have programs that don't need to be installed and work from wherever their location is. Lots of little utilities in Windows can do this without having to be installed. This is in essence how Mac OS X programs work. You can run them as is from where they are. They often come from extracting some form of compressed file like ZIP or DMG or TAR.GZ tarball files. These you can safely copy to a different location.

Answer 2

No. If you save the programs they are only part of their install. there are hundreds of library files and registry entries installed when the programs are. This is what the installer program does. To get the programs running again you definitely need the full installer.

Answer 3

When you have a second partition ( d:/ drive), you can make some directories there and copy your programs.  Then there is no need for an external hard drive.