Clean install on V ista. What might some issues be

[Terry W]

My desktop computer is full and I just purchased a new HD for it. It was running pretty slooooooow so I was thinking a fresh install of Win V ista again to help things out.

Don't know if it's worth the hassles of trying to reload all the drivers etc so I thought I would check to see if anyone here has done this recently and what issues they had. I got a 1T hard drive with a back up program but I think I need to reload programs to make them work right with all the registry junk.

Thanks for any tips.

[Gordon]

For me..... your problem is Vista! Just had to reload a laptop with Vista Home Basic. I had to use a seperate PC to download the correct drivers (yes, originally downloaded the wrong NIC driver).... but got things back up and working. Make sure you double check all your drivers (correct manufacturerer). Some PC Manufacturer use different manufacturers on their same model of PCs (There was 3 different manuf. for my laptops nic card)........Know what you have first! Mine wasn't easy, I couldn't just flip over and look and the manuf. stamp.

The backup (depending what you backup) will just backup the data, not all the programs themselves. Your correct, You will need to reload the programs (so, make sure you have all the program disks and lic keys). If it does backup everything (Operating system and all), then you will have the same problem....just on a larger drive.

To me, this would be a last resort. Have you already tried to clean things up first.

G

Sorry for the rambling.... I've been having PC issues lately and it's getting under my skin.

[StrikingStone]

Having a full drive (less than 10% free space or worse) will cause extreme slowness on any version of Windows. If that is your case and you just want to expand, add the 1Tb drive and move (not copy) your data files to a partition on it. This presumes you have lots of data- pictures, music, video etc. and moving them will give you better than 25% free space on the primary drive. If most of your space is taken up with programs, you will need to start over on the new drive.
Whatever your choice, backup everything first. Not just a "backup" but a whole drive image. Dedicate some space (a separate partition) on the 1Tb drive for an image of your current primary drive. I don't know if there are any free programs to do this anymore, but something like Ghost or Acronis True image work well. Rest assured, backing up a nearly full drive will take a loooong time if you booted to it, but better safe than sorry.
Oakley