drivers, updates and windows?

[racerjosh]

couldnt really think of a suitable title that was short enough so i listed some key words

right then, what i would like to know is where windows saves all the drivers and updates that the user has installed since the last time the reformatted?

since i would like to re install windows but i want to keep all the updates and drivers ive installed since the beginning of this year wheni installed xp again...

final question would be how the hell do i get games not to save some files into C:windows part?

i have a D drive for the games, when install the game, i choose the D drive to install to, but somehow it links part of itself to that dam C:WINDOWS folder so when i re format, i cant run the game because the game cant find some stuff in the C partition so i have to re-install the game, which kind of defeats the point of creating a new partition to hold the games in anyway

any light to be shined :wavey::worship: ?

 

[Toxcity]

Windows uses the registry to keep track of the programs installed. Either you start mucking about in the registry (not recommended for most people) or you just install the games again.

Type Regedit into the Run console and it will bring up the registry.

 

[Rastalovich]

Yeah tis a backward way of installing things, but the registry plus some folders in the user`s profile are usually created.

There are tools out there that will take note of what the game/app writes to ur C: drive, none of which I know any names of, but using these I don`t see any reason why u couldn`t install ur game/app - note these changes, and make a folder in it`s folder that u can put all these changes into. Then after a reinstall of good ole windows u can just reapply them.

Be careful of any saved stuff too and option/config files u may change.