Question Reformatting: Which Files/Folders to Backup

[Ellowas]

Hi (again),

A few days ago, up to now, I've been experiencing BSODs that only occur when three specific games—probably more than just those three—in my list of regularly played games are opened and left to their initial loading screens. They will sometimes successfully load and allow me to linger in the main menu or load in-game, but they will eventually freeze then cause my PC to crash anyway and two of those games never caused this to happen in the past. With the help of someone else here, we managed to eliminate two of the three causes of my BSODs; however, the main cause is the fact that something modified my Windows files for my USBs which now causes them to conflict with intelppm.sys by making it wait too long regarding their power state—or something like that (I'm unfortunately no expert in this stuff). Uninstalling and reinstalling drivers couldn't fix it, DISM and SFC couldn't fix it, and there's nothing in my BIOS that can disable or fix it.

So, the only solution I believe I have is a clean slate via reformatting. Besides files I consider important or personal, are there any folders created by Windows I should back up such as... my account's AppData folder or my Documents folder before I reformat my PC?

Thanks in advance,

 

[Lafong]

So, the only solution I believe I have is a clean slate via reformatting. Besides files I consider important or personal, are there any folders created by Windows I should back up such as... my account's AppData folder or my Documents folder before I reformat my PC?

"Clean slate via reformatting"..............

Do you mean you want to do a clean Windows install?

Or not?

If yes, all info on your hard drive will be lost, so you would need to back up all email on the drive, all browser bookmarks, and all obviously personal files like pix, videos, music, Word docuements, Excel files, etc.....whatever you have.

It's up to you to know where that stuff is right now. That all depends on how you have organized your drive.

Maybe you keep stuff in the Users folder somewhere.

Maybe not. I don't.

A clean install will leave you with ONLY Windows itself.

Then you'd have to copy all of your stuff back.

And reinstall all of your applications.

 

[Ellowas]

"Clean slate via reformatting"..............

Do you mean you want to do a clean Windows install?

Or not?

If yes, all info on your hard drive will be lost, so you would need to back up all email on the drive, all browser bookmarks, and all obviously personal files like pix, videos, music, Word docuements, Excel files, etc.....whatever you have.

It's up to you to know where that stuff is right now. That all depends on how you have organized your drive.

Maybe you keep stuff in the Users folder somewhere.

Maybe not. I don't.

A clean install will leave you with ONLY Windows itself.

Then you'd have to copy all of your stuff back.

And reinstall all of your applications.

Clean Slate = Everything gone (aside from what I back up into an external hard drive) + fresh reinstalltion of Windows.

What I'm asking is if there is anything Windows stores that may be important for what I use. Does Windows store configuration files for certain applications in AppData? Documents? Somewhere else? Are there any other folders of significance that may be useful to keep before wiping my entire PC? I know I should back up anything I deem important or personal that I created or installed myself such as pictures, videos, portable third-party tools, notes, et cetera.

I don't know how Windows or the applications themselves handles that stuff since it's not up to me where those files get stored (and I'm honestly not sure if they get stored in either of those folders), so that's why I'm asking here since there may be someone more knowledgeable than me about that stuff.

 

[Lafong]

In my personal experience........the only thing I have ever bothered backing up other than outright personal data is Thunderbird email and browser bookmarks.

I manually back up each of them before any clean install. After the clean install, I import bookmarks and copy the saved Thunderbird installation back to the identical location on the clean install.

I also reinstall and manually reconfigure all applications.

It may be that certain applications I use may have .ini files that would be useful to me after a clean install. I don't bother with them.

There's all kinds of custom stuff in the registry of course, but a clean install gets a new registry and I've never tried to save anything from the old registry. I have a small number of documented registry tweaks that I reapply after a clean install.

I do habitually backup appdata/roaming under my Users directory every few weeks and that of course captures other stuff...........NONE of which I have later found useful after a clean install. I do this backup only because it is a quick way to capture Thunderbird.

I don't game at all and have no idea if anything else might be useful on a gaming PC.

Your mileage may differ.

 

[Ellowas]

In my personal experience........the only thing I have ever bothered backing up other than outright personal data is Thunderbird email and browser bookmarks.

Yeah, stuff like the latter. I honestly wouldn't have known to back those up if you didn't mention them. There's always that one thing we will sometimes forget to pack before we leave or move, lol.

Where would a browser's bookmarks be stored?

I also reinstall and manually reconfigure all applications.

It may be that certain applications I use may have .ini files that would be useful to me after a clean install. I don't bother with them.

There's all kinds of custom stuff in the registry of course, but a clean install gets a new registry and I've never tried to save anything from the old registry. I have a small number of documented registry tweaks that I reapply after a clean install.

I do habitually backup appdata/roaming under my Users directory every few weeks and that of course captures other stuff...........NONE of which I have later found useful after a clean install. I do this backup only because it is a quick way to capture Thunderbird.

I don't game at all and have no idea if anything else might be useful on a gaming PC.

I haven't made any registry changes that I can recall, but I suppose you're right about the reconfiguration part—something I can easily do after reinstalling the applications I use.

I'll just back up my AppData for now and see if there's anything in it that might be useful after I finish giving my PC a thorough purification.

 

[Lafong]

Browser bookmark locations vary by browser, but can typically be backed up from a menu within the browser's configuration.