reinstalling vista. what will i lose?

im reinstalling vista because im having some problems. what exactly will i lose if i DON'T do a fresh install. my main concern are my emails in outlook will they still be intact with the file system?

 

you mean like if you just do a windows recovery versus a clean install?

 

**NOTE - The below is from Spiceworks community. Its an IT program used mainly by IT admins. I did not write this.

What Is The Difference Between A Clean Install, An Upgrade And A Repair Install?

* Clean Install or Fresh Install: An entirely new installation of an operating system or application. To perform a clean installation of an OS, the hard disk is formatted and completely erased. To perform a clean installation of an application, the older version is uninstalled first. Installing the OS on a new computer or installing an application for the first time is automatically a clean installation.

* Upgrade: An upgrade is a new version of or addition to a hardware or, more often, software product that is already installed or in use. Upgrades may be sold as specially labeled, less expensive "upgrade" packages (as, for example, Microsoft's Office suite products) to existing users alongside versions of the product that are made for sale to first-time users. In other models of software distribution, an upgrade may also be available for free or for-charge downloading from the product maker's site.
o Forced Upgrade: A term that is commonly used in the computer field to refer to the practice by some large software developers of automatically updating their products to the newest versions.


* Repair Install: At some point you may need to repair the installation of Windows. This is preferable to a clean install in many cases since it attempts to only repair your copy of windows without having to delete all the files on your computer first. In many cases a repair installation is enough to fix the problem. A repair install deletes the files normally installed by windows XP and then reinstalls them off the disc. A repair install will not rebuild your computer's registry, delete applications and user settings, or fix problems being caused by a program.

References

* PCMAG.com/encyclopedia
* Whatis.com
* University of Iowa

Rev 3 (diff) — Last edited at January 03, 2008 17:09 pm by Myshell (Spiceworks)

 

Heres a link anyway. Not sure if youll be able to get to it though. Worth a try.

http://community.spiceworks.com/education/projects/Clean_Install_Vs._Upgrade_Vs._Repair_Install