Windows 7 Want to reinstall - what do I backup?

[TKR99]

[SOLVED] Want to reinstall - what do I backup?

After formatting a totally different primary partition on another drive that had held an older XP, for some reason Win 7 seems to think it's been dumped instead as it now won't load at all. And when I thought about it, I realised that for some reason I'd always had to select the Old XP drive in order to boot Win 7 - strange, but anyway. Win 7 is still on its own partition so I figure the best way to access it now is to reinstall. But I'd be keen to backup settings and the like to save me having to reinstall everything if that's possible?

Where does Win 7 hold the most important things and for that matter, what are the most important files?!! (You can tell I've not ever used Vista perhaps, as I'm more used to the D&S of XP).

 

[textureDnB]

It sounds like you deleted the bootloader which is installed on the first active partition when 7 is installed. If you boot again from the 7 DVD you will see an option to run startup repair. Run that you may have to run it two or three times since it can only repair one problem per pass.
good luck

 

[TKR99]

Thanks

Great - sounds much easier to try and will hopefully sort the problem out. Good timing too as I was just about to go and try reinstalling, so will let you know shortly

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Perfect - took a bit of fiddling around with given I've 3 drives with 2 having an OS and as I said, previously Win 7 appeared to be loading from the wrong drive, so at least now it's properly fixed - thanks so much for the help and advice