Reinstalling Windows Vista 64bit?

[DJ Tucker]

So a friend of mine has a corrupt vista installation and he wants me to reinstall vista without losing any of his data. he only has 1 hard drive of 500gb which is almost full and really doesn't want to lose any of that data. how can this be done?

[sgkean]

Depending on how corrupt it is, you have several options.

In order of least system damaging
Try the Vista Roll-Back feature, if it's been configured
Use the Vista install disc and try to repair the installation
Reinstall Vista over the current install, data will remain; will have to reinstall software; potential for corruption still be there
Microsoft User State Migration Tool; back-up all the data and the configuration settings to be reloaded after the reinstall
Manually back-up the data to an external drive(s); assuming you have one; potential for data to be missed; total reimage

[DJ Tucker]

ok so it puts everything into windows.old on clean install which is what i hoped would happen but any .exe applications need to be re-installed again

[sgkean]

Correct, it sucks but at least data files remain intact...