Bigmutt

. . Summers in Mexico City are SO predictable: every day starts with 70 degree temps, sunny, fairly dry; maybe gets into 80s by 11 or 12; then in late afternoon or evening comes the tropical showers: p***ing rain! hard, sometimes with hail; lasts for an hour, sometimes longer; then it suddenly stops and everything's back to how it was earlier: sun, low humidity, etc. June through September, bleeding into October sometimes. The rest of the year is more-or-less the same, except with NO rain. I'm from San Diego CA where I think the best all-around climate in the U.S. exists, but Mexico City is even milder: not as hot in summer, not as cold in winter. I love it. And that's about the ONLY thing I love about this hell-hole, population 24 million. (the city, that is)

Recently (4 months ago) jumped over to Vista (Ultimate), and have had lots of fun and surprises, predominantly pleasant. Installing the OS (or formatting & re-installing) is easier & faster than any previous OS. With a few tweaks, it works with all my software and hardware. I recently did my second full re-install (format, etc) and realized that even with being prepared with external backups (full; compressed; image; every kind possible), it's still a huge pain in the butt for me. Re-installing all those Dell driver updates, programs, utilities, etc. takes days & days, and I suspect I'm doing something wrong: not prepared enough, somehow. You know? that feeling of "there's got to be a better way!" ???? So I'm searching the forums like this one (and about 2 dozen others I belong to) for some kind of simplification hints or instructions regarding this process. (btw, photos, music etc are not the problem; that's the easy part) Anyone know of where to point me?? for example, you want to back up everything, just in case, but you DON'T want to reinstall a lot of junk you don't need, or worse: reinstall some problem/headache like corrupt drivers or even a virus. So what's the balance? and how can you do this with least headaches and without taking a piece of your life in the process? I have used many backup programs, all of them have strenghts & weaknesses, none seem to feel quite right. everything from Windows backup to Retrospect to BounceBack to the latest one, Windows Live OneCare backup. And many others in between. No problem restoring photos, music, videos and documents, but it gets trickier with MS Outlook files, printers, camera software, etc. Does anyone out there have a nice, organized routine for total re-installs? (I don't mean automated, just a logical easy routine that puts all the stuff you need in one place maybe.) It would be nice to see something like this on a forum such as this one. I'm sure I'm not the only one who likes to do complete reinstalls at least a couple of times a year; yet it literally takes at least three complete days of my time to accomplish this, namely getting my computer back to where it was before, only better (cleaner). Thanks everyone. hope to hear from you if you've found a way to make this task a little easier and/or faster. Rick, the mexicorider.

Hi, everyone: just found your site and I'm really impressed with the scope & diversity of your forum and its threads. I am long-time PC geek, having begun with early Commodores and moved on to MS Windows from there. Recently (4 months ago) jumped into Vista, and have had lots of fun and surprises, predominantly pleasant. I recently did my second full re-install (format, etc) and realized that even with being prepared with external backups, it's still a huge pain in the butt for me. Re-installing all those Dell driver updates, programs, utilities, etc. takes days & days, and I suspect I'm doing something wrong: not prepared enough, somehow. You know? that feeling of "there's got to be a better way!" ???? So I'm searching the forums like this one (and about 2 dozen others I belong to) for some kind of simplification hints or instructions regarding this process. Anyone know of where to point me?? for example, you want to back up everything, just in case, but you DON'T want to reinstall a lot of junk you don't need, or worse: reinstall some problem/headache like corrupt drivers or even a virus. So what's the balance? and how can you do this with least headaches and without taking a piece of your life in the process? I have used many backup programs, all of them have strenghts & weaknesses, none seem to feel quite right. everything from Windows backup to Retrospect to BounceBack to the latest one, Windows Live OneCare backup. And many others in between. No problem restoring photos, music, videos and documents, but it gets trickier with MS Outlook files, printers, camera software, etc. Does anyone out there have a nice, organized routine for total re-installs? (I don't mean automated, just a logical easy routine that puts all the stuff you need in one place maybe.) It would be nice to see something like this on a forum such as this one. I'm sure I'm not the only one who likes to do complete reinstalls at least a couple of times a year; yet it literally takes at least three complete days of my time to accomplish this, namely getting my computer back to where it was before, only better (cleaner). Thanks everyone. hope to hear from you. Rick, the mexicorider.