Reply to Re: Computer trouble...help?
If you don't have an account, just leave the password field blank.
You don't loose data, you just fubar anything that needs the registry, ie, any program that you have ever installed, any prefrences, everything. What happens, is that all of the old values are overwritten with the defaults. But any *new* keys that are created, such as co-dependant prefrences, etc, are there. These prefrences might depend on specific values for variables that windows overwrites, and this can cause major problems.
For example, on my old win98 machine, I re-installed windows, yet upon trying to rescue some of my files, (more specifically, an unfinished half burned cd that had my cd drivers already on it) I found that when I opened the program that burned the CD under its own format, there were many graphical errors, and the program was *highly* unstable, and wasn't able to make any calls to explorer. (Ie, browse to open files, save, recognize drives, etc.)
Reinstall w/o reformat is only to be performed when you need to transfer files out, windows is fubar, and you *don't* need the programs. And you might end up having a heluva time to get those files as well.
For example, on my old win98 machine, I re-installed windows, yet upon trying to rescue some of my files, (more specifically, an unfinished half burned cd that had my cd drivers already on it) I found that when I opened the program that burned the CD under its own format, there were many graphical errors, and the program was *highly* unstable, and wasn't able to make any calls to explorer. (Ie, browse to open files, save, recognize drives, etc.)
Reinstall w/o reformat is only to be performed when you need to transfer files out, windows is fubar, and you *don't* need the programs. And you might end up having a heluva time to get those files as well.
