More Awesome Than You!

These are very small questions, and hopefully easily answered.

My brother in law wants to reinstall my OS without wiping any data from the hard drive.  He insists that doing this will not touch or harm anything except clearing out the registry, nixing hidden temp files, and a few other system stuffeths.

1.  Is this really going to not touch my stuff?  I'm betting it'll be a darn good idea to back up all my used files somehow just in case there's an "oops."  I seem to be the Goddess of Entropy; everything except weaponry breaks when I try to fiddle with the insides; if it can fark up, it will.

2.  If everything goes well, and I don't lose any data, will I have to reinstall the Sims to get it to work again, or will it run afterwards without futzing?  I already know I'll have to spend a lot of time putting codecs and players and other stuffeths back.  Just didn't know if this'd be added onto the list.

1. If everything goes perfectly, it won't touch anything on your hard drive. But that's a ginormous IF.  Back up, and if he says anything about it, tell him to get stuffed. 

2. You'll have to reinstall all your programs, including Sims.

1.  Okay, I'm not insane in my desire to back stuff up.  I've had far too many BFBVFS to view the thought of not backing up without trepidation.

2.  Sounds cool.  I'll have to go through tonight and make a master list of stuffeths I absolutely need to get back once it's all done.

*click*  Baaaah.

There is an option to "Repair" and not "Restore" which should leave everything basically instact (although when I did a repair I lost everything non-Windows in the Start Menu, and after trying everything I could think of to get the programs back I found the only way was to re-install those programs.  I had to uninstall/reinstall the latest EP, which I think was Pets at that time, but otherwise it wasn't too bad.

However, it's not a process I'd recommend, and I only did it because I'd just had my PC repaired and the repairers had given me a later version of XP with IE7 as standard and I was unable to get rid of IE7, which I disliked.  In the end I chose to reinstall, but since I have two hard drives, I didn't have to worry about any of my sims stuff other than the programs themselves, as my "My Documents" folder is on the second HD.

If you do choose to "Repair", the crucial thing is not to accept the option the first time it appears in the menu.  You need to use the "Boot from CD" option and when the option to either restore or repair appears, is when you need to select the third option, I think (can't remember exactly now).  It sounds to me as though this is what your brother-in-law is suggesting, and if he knows what he is doing it should be ok, but if you are not sure he does know, I'd tell him to sort out his own computer and you'll sort out yours!

You can easily get rid of a lot of unnecessary registry entries with a program like Registry Mechanic, and old program registry entries for programs you no longer have can be removed with Registry Cleaner, you just need to look through the list and check any that you are sure you no longer have and remove them.  If this is all that is wrong with your PC, I'd definitely try cleaning up the registry before resorting to more drastic measures.

Oh, this is not optional.  It will be done whether I like it or not.  I'm just trying to find the best ways to minimize headache as much as possible.