kendo Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 I bought a Dell 4550 from somebody two years ago and I lost the CD that had windows and other programs on it.I got a disk now with just Windows XP and I'd like to do a clean installsince I bought the computer, I've changed the drives around, added a DVDrw drive, a second internal hard drive, and an external hard drive, both with valuable data savedMy question is, when i reinstall windows from the disc, does it wipe out the C: drive and everything on it so I can do clean installs of all my programs. Theres nothing on the drive I can't reinstallwill this affect my other two hard drives at all?I don't know much about how this works and Im just worried about losing data Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scuzzman Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 Yes, it can wipe the C:No, it shouldn't affect your oher drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 I think that your reply does need some qualification. I have two drives, and at one time had some programs installed on the D drive, with the OS on C. When I reinstalled the OS on the C drive, the information was still in folders on the D drive, but I could not access it until I reinstalled the programs, then the info was again accessible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scuzzman Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 If the information is "just data" as the original poster wrote, then it is not specific to any given program. By this, I understood the information was MP3's, JPG's, etc. If they are a proprietary file format such as XLS, then of course Excel or a compatible program would need to be installed before the data could be used, but it was always accessible. My apologies if my reply was misleading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 My info on the D drive was a Camedia program for an Olympus camera, and had several folders containing photo's. Although I only reinstalled the OS on the C dive, I could not access the Camedia program without reinstalling it onto the D drive. It was explained to me that although it was on the D drive, as it was a program, it had also put bits and pieces onto the C drive when I installed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scuzzman Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 This is true. But keep in mind this was not "just data", but instead was an installed program with Registry Keys and required DLL files (libraries) that it depended on (the bits of info that were placed on the C:). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andsome Posted May 23, 2005 Report Share Posted May 23, 2005 That was how it was explained to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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