The Reformat Checklist

Linc

Since I just needed to do this at work, I figured I'd post a checklist for before & after a reformat.

What to back up before a format:

• Drivers (and put on CD or USB drive - at LEAST the Ethernet card driver!)
• Bookmarks
• My Documents
• Desktop
• Email (if using a desktop client like Thunderbird or Outlook)
• Any files you store outside of My Documents (e.g. music, videos)
• Saved games

My standard load of applications:

• Adobe Creative Suite (Design Premium)
• Firefox (primary browser)
  • Foxmarks (can't live without)
  • Web Developer
  • Firebug
  • Colorzilla
  • IE Tabs (for work)
• Safari and Opera (I'm a web developer, if you couldn't tell by the Firefox plugins)
• RocketDock (hell yeah)
• TrayIt
• Chrome ("Create application shortcut" feature used with TrayIt to keep my Gmail, Calendar, Reader, and Campfire chat open in my system tray)
• iTunes, Winamp, and VLC
• WinSCP & PuTTY
• TweakUI (must... control...)
• AVG Free
• Flash
• CCleaner
• Aulogics Defrag
• Folding@Home

What apps do you load by default?

foolkiller

Just wanted to add, if you use Quickbooks, you'll want to make a backup of it first, and perhaps the Intuit Folder, as well as the actual company file that is located in All Users instead of the regular user's profile (Luckily I made an image of that hard drive before I learned that lovely lesson at work.)

The All Users location for the company file is for the newer versions of Quickbooks, the older versions usually store in Program Files\Intuit.