Script to run after install for installed programs?

Hi. I was wondering if there was an easier way you guys use for re-installing all your programs after a fresh install of Windows. Back in Linux I used to just type "sudo apt-get install audacious vlc simple-ccsm compizconfig-settings-manager grsync devede dvdrip unrar streamtuner ubuntu-restricted-extras" (or you can save the above in a text file and double click it and choose "Run in Terminal"). Is there something similar I could do in Windows or a good free program that creates an image of the system partition maybe?



Many thanks, Marco.

 

Coming from Linux (which I use myself, regularly), I can understand your looking for a Windows equivalent of apt. I'm not personally aware of anything similar, and I would be surprised if there is because of the enormous differences between the Linux and MS Windows cultures.



As to free disk imaging software for MS Windows, I've seen free trials of commercial software, but the only disk imaging product that I've used that is truly free is P.I.N.G (PartImage is not Ghost) -- a front-end to the Linux PartImage utility that will create/restore disk images. And while it works well, it's limited it what it can do. For example, it can't mount an image and allow you to extract a file.



A good source of info on MS Windows-compatible freeware and shareware is majorgeeks.com. Look at their Backup section to see a list of products.



The best commercial disk imaging/backup product I've used is Acronis True Image, but the 2009 version has been "dummed down" from the 2008 version so much that I'm not even going to upgrade. So, if you can get version 11 (2008), it's worth using.

 

Thank you very much for the replies. I only ask because re-installing Windows periodically used to be the norm. Hopefully if it's changed now (and from what I've seen so far it has, e.g. it's been up for over 12 days now with no problems!) then the gradual slowdown that XP had is hopefully gone so I won't need to re-install much at all.



Many thanks, Mark.

 

I've not personally seen a reason to reinstall Vista -- other than the one situation where a Windows Update trashed my filesystem.



In my case, I've not seen Vista on any box slow down appreciably over time. It started slow, it's stayed slow. Granted, MS did some performance improvements with Vista SP1 so that now, it's on par with XP in many situations, but I've not seen any improvement. Also, I loaded the beta of SP2 a while back, and didn't see any improvement there either.



In contrast, Seven boots nearly instantly, faster, even, than my Linux installs!