Okay, so I currently have a 4 TB HDD split into 2 partitions, one of which is my C:\ drive. I run Windows 10, and have lots of programs installed. I also have a 250 GB SSD as a secondary drive, but I want to make a fresh install of Windows 10 on it, to use as my boot drive. I plan to install (keep?) most of my programs and games on my HDD.
The question is, since few of my programs are portable, must I backup the settings (with something like CloneApp) and reinstall the programs one-by-one, or could I just keep them on the HDD and somehow make the new Windows installation detect them? I have 770 GB of software [and that's just in the C:\Program and C:\Program (x86) folders]. Reinstalling it all would take a very long time.
Thanks in advance!
Answer
Your biggest issue is going to be the registry, half of the benefit of a fresh install is clean registry. You can backup c:\users\myusername and put those files back after the fresh install.
You can even junction(mklink /j) c:\program files and c:\program files (x86) back to your hard drive. You will have to boot windows from the installation disk go to command prompt and create the junction without windows running. Otherwise it is a protected folder.
However you would need to extract the relevant registry entries for each software package. If all your programs are part of CloneApp great, but this is like not the case.
You would have to monitor the installation of each program with something like sandboxie or process monitor. Either way its a lot of work.
You could export HKEY_USER, HKEY_CLASS_ROOT,HKEY_CURRENT_USER, and part of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, but then your just dragging all the dead weight with you. You lose some of the benefit of a fresh install, the more you directly import the worse it is.
Now, if you re-install the programs and this time monitor the registry next time you will be prepared. However, this is a very time consuming effort.
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