ken1943 wrote:
On Sat, 26 May 2018 22:38:59 -0000 (UTC), "Auric__"
wrote:

swalker wrote:

I recall that when you insert a WIN7 CD into the CD drive of a machine
that already has Win 7 installed that you have the option of either a
clean install or a repair.

My question is, if you choose repair what does the repair overwrite?

What user data is lost?
In theory, nothing.

"The Startup Repair tool repairs Windows 7 by replacing important operating
system files that might be damaged or missing."

Google "windows 7 repair" for some relevant info.

It is not as easy as XP was or 10 is now. Do research. I only did it
once.

The beauty of WinXP, is "Repair Install" could be applied
to a dead OS. You could boot the CD and do Repair Install
from there.

Vista+ only allow "Repair Install" from the running OS,
by executing "setup.exe" off the DVD. And that assumes
a healthy OS to start with. Maybe this was an attempt
by Microsoft to "discourage" the usage of Repair Install,
because of the small amount of use cases where it's really
going to work.

Win10 is no better than Win7.

Win10 has various flavors such as Reset, but it
doesn't materially improve things all that much. You
could Reset and still have a malware problem.

I prefer full backups to achieve a desired end,
as it's simpler for me to put back a couple of
programs I might have added since the last backup,
and do the necessary "delta" on my Downloads folder
and the current Downloads folder. I prefer a recent
(uninfected) backup as my "base".

I've gone back as far as two years with a backup,
and profited from it. I had a piece of software
that was refusing to install. By going back two years,
the software installed. Then it was my job, to figure
out what could have changed. And I found some files
made by the same company, which were conflicting with
the installation. So the two year old backup didn't have
those files. That's the oldest backup I ever used
(temporarily) and got a benefit from it.

The freshest backup I ever made, was only two hours
old, when my Win7 Home Premium on the laptop bricked
(corrupted file system, could not be fixed). And the
backup I made that day, was because "you know, I haven't
made a backup lately". I count myself very lucky on
that one. A Repair Install would not have been possible
in that case. I couldn't even get at my data, unless
I used the backup image. I think I was up and running
after about 20 minutes on that one (the laptop is a bit
slow, so restore takes a bit longer).

Paul