A list of items that should be backed up by hand prior to doing a system rebuild.

Introduction

The purpose of this article is pretty simple. You've decided to rebuild your PC but you are not sure what to backup or maybe you just want to see a list of what other people backup so you can kill curiosity. I'm not sure what your reasons are but mine are simple. When doing a rebuild I always forget to backup certain things and regret it later. Hence this article.

It seems that I'm constantly rebuilding something from my attitude to my PC there's always a good enough reason to start over it would seem. Lately I embarked on a mission to rebuild my laptop and as usual I forgot a few things that I discovered after the fact. Nothing major but the only way to get them back if I really wanted them was to restore my Acronis True Image (ATI) and export them from the program itself or to manually create them. So I sat down and decided to compose a list of the things I'd like to remember to archive in the future before I hit the "self-destruct" button and begin the system rebuild. Since I do too much on computers I figure my list should help a lot of people to remember the things that apply to them. Without further verbiage I'm going to dive into my list. I'll include file paths where appropriate, in many cases you'll have to find out how you go about exporting settings from your own programs. One thing I recommend everyone do is to run a program called Aida32 or now Everest before you do anything else. Do a full system report as it will tell you about drivers, installed applications and provide links to get those drivers later if you don't have them on hand.

Prerequisites

I think the prerequisites for this article are going to be hard to define. After all the prerequisites pretty much become the article. I think to begin with, I'd download a program like Everest or possibly even Belarc Advisor, the purpose would of course be to build a list of all your installed programs and drivers. I would use the list of installed programs produced by either of these two products and I would identify programs that had data associated with them that I would like to keep. Make a list of those programs and if possible note where the data is stored. It may be in the registry or it may be in Program Files and it's quite likely it will be in C:\Documents And Settings\{Profile}\Application Data\ and C:\Documents And Settings\{Profile}\Local Settings. If you have Intel based network cards or adapters, Windows XP does not have drivers for them in it's driver database. Get those drivers ahead of time or you will not be connecting to the internet once you reformat. I'd recommend you actually get your network adapter drivers and your video card drivers and burn them to a CD ahead of time for safe keeping. Please note these may have come with a CD that was packaged with your motherboard. Regardless, now is the time to pay painful attention to the details.

Common Data Files and Their Locations

• Internet Explorer Favorites: C:\documents and settings\{profile}\Favorites
• Outlook email: C:\Documents and Settings\{profile}\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst or you can manually export your stuff like address books, contact information, mail filters, etc…
• VPN Software Settings
• MP3 or other Music Files
• FTP Program Settings
• Instant Messenger/Trillian Settings and contact/buddy lists and numbers.
• Email SPAM Filter settings.
• Stored Digital Camera photos and settings.
• Special configurations used by other programs like Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Dreamweaver, etc…
• Export registry keys for certain applications and save them. That way you don't have to reactivate or reinstall long hard to type numbers to gain access to programs again
• I have a lot of software license keys and similar data stored in Outlook for easy retrieval. The problem is that when I do a fresh build Microsoft Office is one of the last things to get loaded. So I have a directory that has all those emails in it. I export them all to plain text files and write them to a floppy/CD or USB drive
• Personal firewall rules/settings
• Before you get started, identify certain software that you are going to need for sure. Assume you won't have internet access right away so make a list of drivers and other software that's mission critical. I'd say that a short list would be:
  • Modem drivers
  • Network Card drivers. Especially wireless adapters
  • Video Card drivers
  • Printer drivers
  • Windows Service Packs
  • Security tools you want installed before you connect to the internet. Ad-Aware, ZoneAlarm, Spybot Search and Destroy, Spyware Blaster, etc…
  • Dial up ISP software
  • Special mouse or keyboard drivers
  • Your backup/drive image software will certainly be needed if you need to access your archive. I keep Acronis, Norton Ghost and Partition Magic 8.0 handy on a burned CD
• If you have a dial-up ISP make sure you write down your dial-up phone number and other related information
• Backup financial files like Quicken or Quickbooks Pro
• Other special system tools
• Pre-printed list of software key codes and serial numbers
• Special files that you have special data stored in
• For the software developers in all of us. Our IDE's are our home. Make sure you backup settings from My Documents\Visual Studio as well as any code you would like to save

Points Of Interest

In this article the points of interest will most likely be the things I did not remind you of and the things that you forgot. So if after reading this and rebuilding you realize you overlooked something, please let me know what that was and I'll turn it into a generic bullet item for this list. If you read this list and you want to recommend other things that should be added to it please do so. I'll add them as quickly as I can.

History

• August 21st, 2006: First release