I've upgraded/built my own PC with my boyfriends help, but when it comes to software, and Windows specifically, I have questions growing on questions constantly (since 1999, in fact).
Here's one I could really use some help with.
I run Windows XP Home. I have 2 Maxtor hard drives, one a 80 GB and one a 120 GB, and I've divided up each of those hard drives into 4 individual drives, i.e. my main drive with Windows on it is C. Then there's D drive, E drive, F drive all with roughly 29,000 MB each, and H, I, J, and K drives with roughtly 20,000 MB each.
In order to keep my C drive from getting cluttered up with programs ( I install all kinds of programs because I'm a fonts, animations and icons junkie and get what reasonably good software there is to help keep things organized) I put a large portion of my utility programs on D drive. As it stands now I have 98 programs in C and 175 in D.
What I don't understand and my question is about is: If I were to flatten my C drive
(the programs I have on there are mostly system utilities and of course, my printer (Canon), Adobe Reader, Office XP, WordPerfect Office 2002 and AVG (Grisoft Anti-Virus), all of which I have either CD's to reinstall or are not a problem.
I want to flatten C because it has gotten to be a mess. I do not understand how My Documents and Settings works and so I've got My Pictures and other folders acting weird. Rather than compound my errors I thought I'd just reinstall Windows and start over doing it Windows way as far as its organizing goes. (I know nothing about the Registry and know enough to stay out of there, but that's why I'm writng you).
So, my question is this: If I flatten my C drive, what happens with all my programs (175 graphics, photo, icon, font utilities/tools) in D drive? Once I have Windows XP reinstalled will the programs in D (which have registry entries connected to the Windows I have in C now) still work when Windows is reinstalled?
I have a program called Diskkeeper Lite (the free version of Diskkeeper which is marvelous and I defrag at very least once a day) and it never ceases to amaze me that although I do most of my work in C and Windows there, my other drives, all the way down to J (Jabberwocky) and K (Kingfisher) get fragged. Not always a lot but sometimes far more than I can imagine considering I had not been in them whatever day in question.
Why does that happen? I do all my downloading into a folder in D and keep all my picture files in D, as well. In E I keep my animations and icons (I have 185 MB worth of icons organized into 78 file categories, and 105 MB of animations organized into 125 categories - like I said, I'm a graphics junkie) and also a collection of desktop themes both using the old Desktop Architect program to install them, and Stardock's Icon Packager program (for XP) which together hold 750 MB worth of data.
In my H drive I keep a copy of every programs zip or install file along with their update program files as they come available. This drive is getting quickly filled, too, but it has the
working copy of every program I ever downloaded.
In J drive I keep backup copies of all items important to me like the icons, animations, pictures (rather extensive too, with 1.26 GB spread over 24 folder categories), desktop themes, and My Documents & Settings stuff. I keep all my music in K drive and have Windows Media Player copy and store all my music to there instead of in My Music where it wanted to store it.
While I'm asking, can you tell my why Windows won't let me make changes to the name or decorating folder of My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc. ?
Do you also know why Windows won't let you do anything much in it's Fonts folder?
And one final question, because this is driving me crazy. It used to be when I let my mouse hover over a file, a little green highlighted window would pop up telling me file size, name, and type of extension, but it also used to show whatever was inside that I wrote to Comments. Let's say I have a picture of Einstein. I usually name the file Einstein number so and such and it's size, i.e. Einstein 15 400x600.jpg, for instance, and then I'd open up properties and inside under the Summary tab and in Comments, I would write what year the picture showing Einstein was, and whatever other details I had like where, what and so on. Then when I closed it up and hovered my cursor over the picture it would show me not only size, dimensions and extension, but also whatever I'd written in the comments section. Well, lately (since adding some program or other [I add a number of new programs at a time when I'm searching out some specific tool; I use WebAttack for my source-they're really great] and have recently started installing all of them using TUN, Total Uninstall, so I have a way of uninstalling cleanly since I don't mess with the registry on my own), this function, the hover showing comments, doesn't work anymore. It still shows size, dimension and extension, but not comments, and no trying to use the Windows file's "view" functions, "file details...." has managed to bring this back.
I have downloaded a lot of graphics, photo editing programs and I suspect it's one of them that has usurped this nice little feature of Windows, but to go and uninstall them all backwards by date is more daunting than just flattening C drive.
I apologize for all this information I'm giving you and if you prefer just a simple question to having to wade through all this material I just wrote, here it is:
If I flatten C drive will my 175 installed programs in D drive still work after reinstall Windows XP to C?
Thank you very much for offering your expertise. I'm delighted and want only to make your help to me as pleasant and unproblematic as possible.
I have the program AIDA32 which gives a break down of everything I have on my computer and if it would help you to get a copy of the report, I'd be happy to email it to you.
