Clean Install

I finally got all my files transferred to an external HD so I could begin the resetting process. They sure don’t make it easy. I have gone thru re-installs before in order to wipe out and reset hard drives, so I was planning on it taking a little while. When I started, I discovered that you can reset the hard drive without removing any personal files. However, I have learned that things are not always as they seem, so I spent the better part of a week backing up onto the external drive anyway.

I decided to let it run while I was preparing to finish the living room updates, and by updates I mean ripping out the baseboards and touching up the paint around where the edges of the molding was. Eventually, after about 90 minutes to two hours, it was ready. Things worked pretty well. All the junk was removed except “my files”, so I thought I was good to go and I would begin reinstalling the essential software (MS Office, iTunes, etc) and this time I would skip any of the unnecessary apps. Well that was not to be.

I soon found out that everything was working, EXCEPT my start menu. Even the Windows key on the keyboard wouldn’t open it. After a little digging around online, I discovered that there is some known issue with losing the functionality of the start menu when resetting the computer. The first suggestion was to redo the reset and that should take care of the problem. However I wondered if it was a known issue, does Microsoft have an update that would take care of the problem, so I ran my update wizard. Sure enough, there was an update that would handle that. But after three failed attempts to download and install the update (and another 90 minutes of waiting for those failures) I decided another clean install/reset would be just as good. This time however, I had wiped everything out. I figured that I had everything already saved to the external drive so wiping everything out just might work better. About two hours later (it might have been a little longer since I was busy patching holes and sanding) I was good to go.

So now I just need to put my programs back on. Hopefully this will take care of any lagging problems