So… I managed to get annoyed enough enough with my desktop slowing down that I decided to just give up and (re)install Windows 7 to an extra old hard drive. (And then muck around with partitions to get the new improved system back on the faster drive. In retrospect, should have done the move first. Must remember that for next time.)
Anyway. Steps, and what I installed:First off, unplugged everything but the one hard drive I wanted to install to. Technically not needed, but my data’s important to me, so it’s more of a ‘better-safe-than-sorry’ measure.
Installed Windows 7 as per normal, that was no problem. Wait for it to download the 95+ updates, reboot a few times, then get on with installing my programs.
First off was Steam. Downloaded & installed it, signed in, then quit. Signing in was to force it download any necessary stuff. Then, from the Steam folder on my old drive, I copied a few things over, namely
appcache/*, steam/* steamapps/*, userdata/*, AppUpdateStats.blob
Programs still to install, divided into categories of work needed
No special work required, i.e. download & run
- BOINC/WCG
- Dropbox Folder Sync
- ImgBurn
- Notepad++
- Skype
- TeraCopy
- TrueCrypt
- Wireshark
- VLC
- Adobe CS5 (Only issue is reinstallation, but that’s easily solved by calling Adobe)
- Winrar
Copying over AppData folder
- FileZilla
- Firefox – AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox, update Profiles.ini with the new profile name
- Chrome – AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data
- Thunderbird
- Winamp
- X-Chat 2 (after getting Dropbox Folder Sync installed)
- Zinio
Special work needed
- CrashPlan (Going to need to look at their ‘moving to a new system’ docs)
- iTunes (Don’t want to have to resync my iPod & lose all my timing settings on the songs) – Seems to be just copying My Music/iTunes Music over