Reformatting

[Cream Soda]

Ok, my hdd is partitioned into C drive and D drive. C drive mainly being windows, drivers, etc. D drive being all my shit.

If I reformat (or if I can find a authenticated download for windows 7), does that only affect the C drive? Does all the stuff on the D partition remain in tact.

Also, how does this work for things that had to be installed (but installed on the D drive). Is there any way to manually put into the registry, so that I don't have to install again?

[Balthasar]

Ok, my hdd is partitioned into C drive and D drive. C drive mainly being windows, drivers, etc. D drive being all my shit.

If I reformat (or if I can find a authenticated download for windows 7), does that only affect the C drive? Does all the stuff on the D partition remain in tact.

Also, how does this work for things that had to be installed (but installed on the D drive). Is there any way to manually put into the registry, so that I don't have to install again?

If you do it through the Windows 7 installer, it should give you an option between the two partitions. In theory it should only affect the selected partition, but then again i've never done it first hand.

[xopher]

You can choose to only format the C:\ partition.

About reinstalling, you'll probably just have to reinstall everything. You'd have to be pretty decent with writing batch scripts and merging registry entries to do it yourself.

[Cream Soda]

any way to just save the registry as it is now and just load it after reboot?

[xopher]

Yeah you can save the whole thing but no guarantees it'll work right unless you have installed everything identically.

[Dmitry]

When you begin the installation for Windows 7, if you start it while already in the operating system, it lets you choose the partition you want to format and install it on to. If you boot from the CD it allows you to manage your partitions also.