Any tips for backing up and reinstalling FFXIV on Win 7 HomePrem 64bit?

My PC has been running rather slow in recent months, regularly hanging from a single mouse click, etc. I run Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit and I have run (and continue to run daily) many, many scans for virii/malware/spyware/rootkits/etc, but I've come to the conclusion that it's simply an old tired system that has been the same single installation for far too long, with far too many installs and partial uninstalls (lots of programs leave little bits behind) and I really need to just do a fresh install.

I currently have a fully up to date version of FFXIV installed and it works perfectly fine (aside from the issues that plague the entire system, but even those aren't as bad in the game). I would like to have the same in the fresh install of Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I do not want to download patches for the game over the 24 hours following the probably long and painful process I'll have already gone through getting the OS back up and everything else installed when I've already downloaded all the patches and things earlier. I'm also under the impression that some game data is stored client side, including gear sets and maybe hotbars and macros (?), and don't want to do all of those things from scratch either.

As such, I need to know what I should do to preserve the data I currently have, before wiping the drive. What files are hidden where and can they just be copied onto an external drive until the game is reinstalled and then pasted back into their original C drive locations?

In your Documents folder you'll find: My Games\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn\

Make a copy of those folders (you'll need to move them back exactly as they are after reinstall). They're not "critical", but if you don't you'll have to accept the EULA again and create all your hotbats/gearsets again, so it's best to make sure you have that.

Then in wherever you installed FFXIV you'll likely find a SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn folder. Just copy all of that somewhere else, exactly like it is.

You don't actually need to reinstall the game if you don't want because it doesn't create any registry entries and will happily run just by copying it back, but if like me you want completeness and it to create the shortcuts etc then that's simple enough:

Download/install the launcher (109 Mb) from: http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/playersdownload/na/

(the eu page links to exactly the same installer, it's the actually account details you sign in with that are region locked, not the game itself).

But after installing the launcher don't do anything else (if you run it, it'll start creating your document files and it'll want to download the game etc).

At this point after having installed the launcher move all your files back again. You probably won't have a Documents\My Games folder on a clean install, but if you create/move the files back exactly like they were inside the documents folder before, they'll be fine). It doesn't matter if your documents folder has changed location, only that the subdirectories/files inside it are in the correct places.

Then move the SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XIV - A Realm Reborn big game files back over as well. Overwrite any existing files (because they'll be old versions of the launcher etc).

And that's it! This is exactly how I installed it on my netbook without having to redownload it all and you'll have a fully reinstalled game with only minimal downloading :)

Do what i do, chuck entire thing onto an external drive. Play from there. Voila!

If you need to do the installing bit, first copy entire game over to external drive. Give it a name but add a letter B or something so u can go back to it later. (AKA FinalFantasy XIV-B)

Get the download to install the game, set installation for the external drive with the file name you want to name it as (in this example FinalFantasy XIV) but minus the B in name, so that you would have sans B and with B files. Once installed, go copy and paste files from folder B into fresh install.

Run patcher to fix any missing files, etc.

The character data should be stored in another file on you computer tho, system/games or something such. I forget the exact path for that. Copy those too if you dont want the hassle of redoing macros and hotbars.

If redownloading isnt an issue, by all means go ahead and just readownload the whole 7+g and ingore the copy and paste bit. :)

Thank you both very, very much ^_^

Already in the process of copying the Program Files FFXIV folder, will go grab that My Games one next. Then begins the arduous (but now, thanks to you guys, significantly shorter) process to wipe+reinstall everything.