How to reinstall CLOD from scratch??

[Buccaneer]

There is another way too. This way you can mess about with your CloD installation as much as you like. Knowing you can get back to your Vanilla, or officially patched up version within 10 minutes.

I use Paragon Drive Image. .

Got fed up reformatting, installing Win7, downloading updates, installing Firewall/Anti Virus, downloading updates. Reinstalling other programs and updating (and thats with up to date program updates saved to CD), It took two days usually to get everything the way it was.

Drive Image has restored the lot in just under 10 minutes. (Re-installed via their bootable CD which acts like the old Windows System disk. As long as it can find the drive you have saved your backup to, removeable or otherwise)...... I'm a Happy Old Hector.

Standard (non-imaging) backups are file-oriented: Each file you're backing up gets copied to the backup medium, one file after another. That's OK, as far as it goes, but it usually means it's difficult or impossible to copy any files that are in use by the operating system itself or by the user; your backup may not be as complete as you think!

There can also be problems when you restore a standard backup: Again, in-use files may not be able to be restored properly, even if they were originally saved OK. Plus, whatever files can be restored will be overlaid onto an existing setup, so you end up with a mix of freshly-restored files alongside old files. This means restoring from a standard backup may not be able to correct some software problems, and may not be able to bring your system back to "like new" condition, no matter what you do.

"Imaging" a hard drive is very different. It's disk oriented instead of file oriented: The imaging tool copies the first sector of the hard drive, no matter what it contains, then copies the second sector, and so forth. This means that the image contains not just a bunch of files, but an exact copy of your hard drive's complete contents AND structure.

This means that an image gets EVERYTHING, including the placement and order of files on the drive. Thus, if you image a defragged hard drive, and later restore that image, you'll also be restoring the drive to the freshly-defragged state. In contrast, restoring a normal backup usually results in increased fragmentation.

In practice, this means that if (for example) you make an image of a fresh install of an OS, with everything tuned; tweaked, and optimized to perfection, you can restore the drive to that perfect condition at any time just by reverting to the stored image. Think about it; No matter how scrambled or messed up your system is, just restore the image and you're back to like-new perfection in a matter of minutes!

But a good imaging tool can do even more: It also will let you selectively restore individual files, if that's all you need: You don't "have" to restore everything in the image, unless you want to.

You can see why imaging is such a big deal: It not only provides all the benefits of file-by-file traditional backups, but also gives you much more - the ability to totally restore your system to a 100% perfect state, in minutes.

My backups go to D: a 500Gb spare. Windows baselines. And standalone games. CloD, Skyrim, ArmA etc.

I have a Vanilla to latest patch (no JS settings etc) backup. And an Operational backup (pilot, aircraft, JS setup) ready to go as required. 10 minutes to restore to the original state instead of a couple of days.