Hope me get my settings back.

April 14, 2007 10:08 AM

Had to reinstall XP Home. How do I get all my old settings back?

Something inside my computer went all explodey. I'm not sure what happened, but I could not boot at all. Had to reinstall XP Home from the CD.

I had thought that all that would do would be repair whatever was broken in XP. Clearly I was wrong. I've managed to find my old 'my documents' folder, and restore the Start Menu to how I had it before.

What I need to find (if possible) are:

1) whatever file governed how my taskbar was set up, including quicklaunch

2) My Firefox settings, including add-ons and skin

3) Basically, actually, all of my old settings.

Am I hooped?

posted by dirtynumbangelboy to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Oh, also, would love to find all my saved passwords for Firefox.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:11 AM on April 14, 2007

IIRC, just about all your settings live in C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data. So if an old version of that exists somewhere, you should be able to copy it over and get your settings back.
posted by smably at 11:13 AM on April 14, 2007

Your quicklaunch bar is in

Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Your FF profile (including saved passwords) is in

Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data\Firefox\

Note that you should follow these instructions to restore your FF profile after you've reformatted and reinstalled everything.

Other settings are probably easier to restore as you come across them in your new install (Windows and various programs like to throw settings around and store them in various places, so no good way to do it all at once).

You might also want to check out nLite, if you plan on doing a clean reinstall at any point. (Which I recommend, btw, since you're having to dig around and back up everything anyway you might as well start clean.)
posted by anaelith at 11:31 AM on April 14, 2007

Thanks guys, I seem to have most things back.

I'm still missing three things, though... Intel Active Monitor (I've found the program but it now won't run), SoundMAX is just displaying its icon with a little red line through it, and there was a program that came preloaded on the computer that adjusted gamma settings etc, which I really need b/c this monitor is old and dark. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the program at all. Anyone? Bueller?
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 1:38 PM on April 14, 2007

Make sure you've installed up-to-date drivers... Depending on the manufacturer of your computer, their website (in the support section, generally) should have all of the drivers and utilities that your computer shipped with. You might also want to get newer versions of some things direct from the manufacturer of each item, for example video card drivers. If you post more about what kind of computer it is and what you know about the hardware, I may be able to help you track some of this stuff down.

What kind of error does Active Monitor give you when you try and run it? (Have you reinstalled it?)

You probably need audio drivers.

This sounds somewhat like Catalyst, which comes with ATI video card drivers... I think that the other big video card manufacturer (NVidia) probably has something similar. Or if you've got an on-board video card, it might come with your motherboard drivers. In any case, getting the latest drivers should help.
posted by anaelith at 2:06 PM on April 14, 2007

I got all the drivers from Intel.. took a while to figure out my chipset. Thanks, all!
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 3:10 PM on April 14, 2007