Windows 10 Clean install of Windows 10 but keep my programs installed?

[wubuu]

Hi everyone. I have 2 drives on my PC, my C: boot drive where Windows 10 is installed, and my A: drive where all of my programs are installed.
Windows 10 is playing up and I want to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10.

However, is it possible to keep all of my programs over the reinstall, as they are not stored on the boot drive? I don't know too much about how Windows works (hence why I'm here) but I'm thinking something along these lines:

1) Backup part of Windows Registry as a file on A: (A part that tells windows what programs are installed, their serials and respective paths to their .exe)
2) Clean reinstall of Windows 10 on C:
3) Restore Registry from file on A:
4) Programs stored on A: continue to work on C:, when C: is booted

Could I please have detailed instructions on how to do this, if it's possible please?
Open to any ideas on how to keep programs over a reinstall.
Thankyou.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Here are instructions for doing an Upgrade of Windows 10 from Windows 10.
It says that this will maintain all your files and software just as a upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 would.

Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade

What I would recommend is take the time to create a System Backup, using software like EaseUS Backup and create the bootable repair disk that it will make for you.

My system is like yours with Windows on a drive of it's own, it takes me about 20 minutes to make or restore a backup.

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This is what I use, you can use any backup software that you want, save the backup on your second hard drive.

Then go ahead and do the in place upgrade.

If it doesn't do what you want, you can use the backup to restore your computer to where you are now.

My computer just did something very similar to this as part of a Windows update a few days ago.

It completely reinstalled Windows without losing anything and it worked fine, fixing problems I've had since I updated to retail.

Mike