Originally Posted by
audiomick
Lots of good advice in DuckHook's post. That is pretty much exactly what I would do.
I would like to add the following:
Firstly, to reiterate what has already been said, I would not advise trying to simply upgrade from a suspect system. If there really are issues in there, the chances are that they will by carried over to the newer version. A fresh install will give you a solid basis to go on with.
If you don't already have an external drive or something along those lines, think seriously about getting one. Backups are important, and should be on a medium external to the computer that is being backed up.
When you do your fresh install, think about putting the /home folder on a separate partition. You need to go into the "something else" option of the installer when it gets to the point where you can choose between "install beside" and "use the whole drive". This is not absolutely necessary, but gives you the option of retaining an existing /home folder in a new install.
If you, as DuckHook suggested and backup the entire file system or even just the whole /home folder, you should just copy back the files you want, not the whole thing. The reason for this is that your configuration files are in the /home/user folder as hidden files. You can see them by activating the "view hidden files" option in the view menu of the file manager. If any of them are corrupted, simply copying them back will bring the corruption across.
If you have backed up the whole thing, and want to revive a configuration from the old install, you can. Locate the config file for the program in question in the fresh install and make a copy of it under a different name. Copy across the old file from your backup, making sure that it gets saved in the /home/user folder with exactly the right name, and then check to make sure it is all working properly. If anything has gone wrong, you can put back the copy of the fresh file that you made.
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