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Another idiot question I expect but...
I have loaded many programmes, fonts files, clipart and pictures etc into VA - and have set up the pinboard, menubar and !boot etc to how I want the whole to be. It took ages!
I now have to uninstall and reinstall the core VA programme and assume that, in so doing, I'll loose everything that is "stored" on the Acorn harddisc4. (i.e. the disc file is deleted along with everything else). Am I right in this?
If yes:
Can I make a backup of harddisc4 and simple drag it back in after the reinstall?
Will it need to be zipped or ArcFS-ed first?
Or do I have to go through the misery ("hey, its a fun hobby!") of reinstalling every flipping programme, font etc etc.?!!

Yes you should be able to do that. Worth zipping everything first, as otherwise when you copy everything back, you may find the filetyping's gone a bit peculiar.

I tried this once and it did not work. VA kept saying I needed to re-install.
After speaking to VA, they said it would be better just to copy certain files rather than try and replace the default Harddisc4 with a backup.

The best idea with this problem is to write the contents of the HardDisc4 folder (from Windows) to a DVD. This supports deep enough directory structures to copy without problems and is usually big enough. You don't need to .zip it up in advance.
If you want to write to a CD you will need to .zip up the whole harddisc4 folder first otherwise it will most likely go wrong as CD's only support 8 directories deep and you run the risk of long filenames getting truncated, and you losing the extension that HostFS uses for the filetype.

I spent a while fiddling around when I first installed VRPC (recently) and even re-installed the whole thing over my first installation. To my surprise, the contents of HardDisc4 remained intact. (Which was a bit annoying since I deliberately wanted to start fresh!) I didn't actually try to use it in that state, however, so I don't know what the long-term implications would have been.
Adam

When you un-install VirtualAcorn it only un-installs what was installed to start with, not what has been added by the user. This is deliberate and means that should something nasty happen to the boot sequence (which is very unlikely) they can un-install. Then re-install a fresh version, but not lose all their files.