can I Reformat hard drive and reinstall windows but?

Question

but leave some of my files on computer. i have like 20-30 gigs of music and ect. if i put it all on in one folder Can i do that? If i can, would repair windows or reinstall?

Answer 1

unless your music is on a seperate partition, when you format you will lose everything. you could burn all of that music onto about 6 or 7 dvds. maybe you could buy some database space on some site and upload all of your music there, but unless you have a fast connection that will take a long time. get a second harddrive, they are not that expensive anymore. and transfer the stuff you want to keep to that had whiel you format the other and reinstall windows. you could take your hard drive to a freidns house who ha that kind of sapce on his computer and hook your hard drive up to his and copy the files onto his. then once you get windows back onto your hard drive, tkae it back to your firend and put your stuff back on it. you have several opotions. you could also try fixing windows. there shoud be an option to do that on the windows cd. good luck

Answer 2

1) Determine if you can boot from CD by placing the Windows XP CD (or other known bootable CD) in your CD drive and reboot. If the system starts from the CD, great, if it just goes back to your usual desktop, not so good, you'll need to dig further into how your system works. 2) Assuming you *can* boot from the CD and have the Windows XP CD in during boot, keep an eye out for the message "Press any key to boot from CD". Earlier XP boot CDs did not have this, if I recall correctly. If you *do* see it, press a key. This will start the setup process. 3) Read each screen that comes along, and answer accordingly. There's really not much to do but accept the license. 4) You will eventually be shown a list of available partitions on your hard drive. You want to DELETE all of them. Follow the instructions. It's something like D to delete, then L to confirm. 5) Now CREATE a partition, accepting all defaults 6) Format NTFS (NOT Quick Format NTFS). Depending on the size of your drive, this may take a while. 7) Continue reading screens and following instructions until your installation is complete. 8) Get yourself anti virus software, anit spyware software, and a firewall. See below for suggestions and links for HOME use.

Answer 3

You cannot reformat and keep the contents of your drive. Formatting erases the ENTIRE content of the HD. Sounds like you want to do a Windows XP Repair, which will simply reinstall Windows WITHOUT reformating the HD.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Answer 4

a format removes all data so do a repair install it's the second R option don't do a recovery which is the first R option do a repair install and you will not lose your files your gonna have to put the keys for the programs you've installed though along with the windows key so have that ready

Answer 5

I know it is possible, but I don't know how. My entire system got fried during a storm and I took into a computer shop to get fixed. They had to change the Mother Board and the Hard Drive, reload
Windows and they were able to keep all my files except for email addresses for some odd reason.

Answer 6

just make that stuff moved in another drive and then with bootable cd start windows installation with a fresh installation bt not with a repair installation....and when ull proceed it will give u an option to choose the drive for installing windows , show the drive in which ur windows already present and it will ask u to choose another drive but u carry on with that only and then it will give u option to format that drive , just format it using FAT file system...

Answer 7

I would repair it first before reinstaling...you could buy a cheap drive for around 100 to back up yor files first.....

Answer 8

get an external harddrive and copy your music and stuff to it then do a complete format and install

Answer 9

if you dont back up ur files soon as you format da pc there all gone