question time again...

[midnight_blue]

Hi guys...I have had a few 'teething' problems with my new PC - though these now at least, appear to have been remedied...I have re-installed windows a few times as a result, and noticed that I now have four files:

window.old
windows.old 000
windows.old 001
windows.old 002

my question for the day is: can I just go through 'my computer' and delete these files? there is also a seperate file just called 'windows' in the root directory of 'C'...answers on a postcard please, and if possible, in English English for the computer illiterate, though that is slowly improving with each damn crash...lol

Kind regards, Daniel.

[Groovechild]

Hi Midnight, it seems that when you are re-installing Windows, you are leaving the old versions. The problem with that is many of the files in the Program Files directory, as well as the users directory, remain the same. So problems that you may have had with applications will continue to have problems. The better way to (re)install Windows is to format the drive clean (remove the existing partition altogether and create a new one) and then install Windows from scratch. Obviously, you want to back some stuff of your PC first, such as everything in your users folder (My Documents, My Videos, iTunes folder if you have one, etc) as well as any files scattered on the disk that you want saved.
Once you reformat everything, Windows will be in a clean state (you just need to reinstall all your programs - starting with Antivirus first). Then do all your Windows updates and driver updates, and then install the software.
This is actually the reason I buy all my games on Steam. If I ever have to rebuild, I just download and reinstall and don't have to worry about losing disks.

[Groovechild]

In regards to keeping those files, if you don't want to reinstall again, you can delete the older folders; they are not used.

[midnight_blue]

thx for the heads-up...will give it a go now...if you dont hear from me within the next couple of days, it will have all gone tits-up and my PC will be out the window!! lol