If I run a System Restore (Windows Vista), will I lose everything on both my hard drive partitions?

You are NOT using the correct terminology.

You said " ....before i reset it to factory settings..."

You were referring to System Recovery, NOT system restore.

To anser your question : if you are planning to do system RECOVERY, yes you will lose evrything because you will be going back to Day One, the factory state. You'll need to backup whatever you want to keep first.

Ok stop. Before you do anything, virus scan these files. The last thing you want to do is infect another partition. You shouldn't lose the files unless the only previous restore point was made before you had any of these files. If you want to move them to another partition, that's all well and good, just ensure there's no infected music or photos etc.

System Restore is not supposed to delete personal files such as songs, pictures... so unless you do something wrong you are good to go. You shouldn't even have to move the files. But if it does happen to go wrong, moving them won't help you unless you moved them to a drive that you can remove like an external hard drive or a thumb drive.

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