Solved windows.old

[phiend]

Hi,

I've just re-installed Windows Vista because I was having start-up issues. I can see all the old programs I had in the Windows.old folder and I'd like to have all those programs on the new install. Is there an easy way to do this, or do i have to manually transfer all the files and then re-install them?

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[Night Hawk]

The Windows.old folder is there for saving any files out of it prior to saying good bye forever to it. With fresh install of Windows you now need to install each program all over again from the start since you are dealing with a brand new system registry.

Game saves, documents, and other things may still work when copied to the new folders created by installers while anything but stand alone programs/utilities would need to see a fresh install.

 

[dinesh]

Hi,

I've just re-installed Windows Vista because I was having start-up issues. I can see all the old programs I had in the Windows.old folder and I'd like to have all those programs on the new install. Is there an easy way to do this, or do i have to manually transfer all the files and then re-install them?

Thanks in advance for your help

the windows.old folder is the one that contains items which were there prior reinstalling the OS. you cannot access this folder. you will have to transfer the files manually. and better delete the windows.old folder as it will consume more than 3 GB of HDD space.

 

[Night Hawk]

If you want to save any wallpapers, photos, docs, things like that grab those first and simply dump the folder entirely. I make a habit of keeping things in other folders other then those seen in that for safe keeping if Windows does need to reinstalled for some reason.

 

[sygnus21]

you cannot access this folder.

False

The Windows.old folder is there for saving any files out of it prior to saying good bye forever

Game saves, documents, and other things may still work when copied to the new folders created by installers while anything but stand alone programs/utilities would need to see a fresh install.

True

Yes - windows.old is your old windows that you had prior to doing a vista upgrade/clean install.

Once your new install is complete, you can either keep the folder, delete the folder, or open it and pull out anything you want, like your "Documents", "Music", "Favorites" folder, or any other folder(s) or files you want.

To delete the "windows.old" folder go to:

1- "Start"
2- "Accessories"
3- "System Tools"
4- "Disk Cleanup"
5- Click on "Files from all users on this computer" and wait till the scan is done,
6- Then check the box that says "windows.old" - This will delete the folder from your system.

Make sure you get everything you need or want from the folder before deleting!!!

 

[phiend]

Thanks for all your help. Merry Xmas

Looks like I'll be re-installing some programs than making a snowman....at least my start-up problem seems to have gone!

 

[stormy13]

Thanks for all your help. Merry Xmas

Looks like I'll be re-installing some programs

Go through the program folders as well and try running them using the exe, if it runs you don't need to re-install it. You can either just leave it there or you can copy and paste and move it to the new Program Files folder, and just make a shortcut for the desktop for it.

One reason why I always run with more than one hard drive or partition, and install all my games on the second non-OS drive. Saves having to re-install all my games (which can take far longer than re-installing and setting up Windows) in the event of a loss of Windows for whatever reason. For the few that do need to be re-installed I cheat with, I went and found what all the required registry entries are and keep them in a safe place and just add them to the registry on a clean install (nothing like installing a half dozen of so games in about 2 seconds ).

 

[sygnus21]

For the few that do need to be re-installed I cheat with, I went and found what all the required registry entries are and keep them in a safe place and just add them to the registry on a clean install (nothing like installing a half dozen of so games in about 2 seconds ).

Isn't this time consuming - having to find all those entries? I'm curious about your technique.

For what it's worth, I too keep a seperate hard drive for my games and other stuff, but find that some games (most) will need to be reinstalled. However I Just have to install the base game as the saves and other stuff like mods are retained.

However, this registry thing sounds interesting, "IF' all the strings can be found, and, it's not too tedious and time consuming.

 

[stormy13]

Isn't this time consuming - having to find all those entries? I'm curious about your technique.

Cheated with that too. :D

Some games were very easy to find them all. Google comes in very handy on one hand, and quite often if you search on the games support site you can find it there. EA for example has detailed manual uninstall instructions for most of the games they put out, including all the registry keys. Here's BF2 for example,

ANSWER

Nice thing is that once you have them you never need to look for them again, unless you lose the file that has them all in it.

 

[Night Hawk]

You may get away with that for a few games but try that with Steam. After a total reformat of the drive here seeing everything cleaned off when the Windows installer decided to reformat on it's own when going to reinstall the game disk was made totally useless when trying to install the game again.

All I got was "key already activated" or "duplicate key" even when using the reinstall option. The account could still be logged onto but you could no longer redownload the game files.

With other games you have to go through all maps again for the auto saves while some older ones will see the game saves load right up if you are reinstalling the same version of Windows and not upgrading. A clean full install insures all registry values are created again however.

 

[sygnus21]

@stormy13,

Man that's just too much of a hassle. I Since I keep my games on a seperate drive, all I have to do is the base reinstall, all my mods and saves are left intact. Easy for me

@ Night Hawk,

The beautiful thing about steam based games is all I have to is reinstall steam, and walla, all my games are there just as I left them - no game reinstalls or anything. Of course it helps to have your steam folder on a seperate drive. :D

 

[stormy13]

You may get away with that for a few games but try that with Steam.

That isn't too hard to do as I avoid Steam like the plague, and flat out refuse to have anything to do with it.

 

[Night Hawk]

I hadn't planned on seeing the partition reformatted when reinstalling Windows to correct another problem. The odd thing was not seeing the Windows.old folder created like you would if upgrading from XP. Another mystery to solve I guess.

 

[sygnus21]

The odd thing was not seeing the Windows.old folder created like you would if upgrading from XP. Another mystery to solve I guess.

I'm not sure what you mean so pardon my indulgence when I say windows.old is only created during a "clean install" of Vista "Upgrade". You won't see this in XP, since you can "upgrade" to XP from previous versions of Windows, which in-turn allows you to keep your previous settings and programs.

Example: If you "upgrade from windows 2000 to XP, you can keep your Win2K settings and all the programs loaded. Cool, no need to reinstall programs. :D

Vista on the other hand offers no such feature, even if you install Vista "Upgrade" over another OS, it won't allow you to keep your old settings and programs. Bummer. What is does instead is create a folder called "windows.old" and moves your old OS there. From this folder you can then pull out your old info, like Documents, Music, Favorites, etc. Why...???

And remember, "Vista Upgrade" still requires an OS to be installed (you can install vista twice as seen here - http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/68767-clean-install-upgrade-vista.html?ltr=C), so you'll always get the windows.old folder.

Again, pardon my indulgence if you already knew this.

 

[Night Hawk]

I use a full version disk here which originally saw the XP installation placed into the Windows.old folder. Recently when reinstalling Vista over itself the folder simply wasn't created seeing the primary reformatted instead. Fortunately all the good stuff was already backed up since I wasn't expecting to see the reformat take place.