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Seriously though, once you've rebuilt the system, make a Ghost image of it for future reloading. Stash that on a DVDR along with a trusty Ghost boot disk. Then you can try out all the risky software (WinFX, DOTNET beta, etc) and just reghost.

I actually have my Windows partitions set up so C:\ contains only Windows system files (apps on D:, storage on E: and F:). If I'm doing something risky, I'll make a Ghost backup of C:\ first.


I found that doing images or partitions also was more work then it was worth. The image of something like that is out of date so quickly on a Wintendo box. And partitioning, especially on a small laptop drive just ends up wasting space. One new patch for Windows and all of a sudden the c:\ partition isn't big enough. Or I install a new game, to find D:\ is out of space, but c:\ still has 2 gigs left.

Also, to me FDISK is an extreme solution. Why waste time trying to back up data, then fdisk, format and reload, then bring backup data back in when I can just nuke the windows folders from a Live CD solution? My primarially gaming system doesn't get the same attention I would give to a server. It's for gaming and having fun, and to me these days, staring at a format progress bar isn't fun.

Having tried it a few more times, it is definitly the USB drive hanging the system on boot now. I have no idea why, but honestly have no reason to put any more time into trying to solve it. Still irritates me that Windows likes to hide so much detail from even an administrator makind narrowing down a problem harder. Boot logging appears to give me the same list of drivers safe mode did, and the list is all the drivers pretty much.