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How many times do you guys reinstall Windows???

C

caz67

Golden Member
Hi guys,

Im just curious as to how many times a year, you would reinstall Windows??

I tend to do a clean reinstall ever 4mths or so, as i want to clean out all the crap...

Is this unusual or fairly normal.??
 
I just keep it clean, and don't reinstall till I have a major hardware upgrade. Works great for me, usually about 1 year or more on the home box, running 3+ on a few boxes at work.
 
Since I installed XP Pro on three systems, I have never had to reinstall any of them. (Estimated 3.5 years) If you maintain them properly, reinstallation should only be required if something traumatic happens like a virus or worm or an excessive amount of adware and spyware. But - those only happen when you fail to maintain things properly.
 
My current install has been going strong for almost 2 years now. The only reason I reinstalled then was due to a hard drive failure.
 
I reistalled 3 times this past weekend just for kicks and experimenting with partitions/dual boots. In the end it's just a waste of time.
 
My desktop XP install (at home) was 3.5+ years old and had gone through a lot of hardware changes (motherboard, video card, hard drive). The only reason I ended up recently rebuilding it was because I turned it into a MCE box...

Even if you are hard on your install if you use some common sense (i.e. not installing POS software or letting malware on) it should last for years.
 
I reinstall about once a month on average probably...but i have a seperate boot harddrive and all my major programs on a dvd so its not to bad to get everything back to how it was.
 
I never reinstall, unless I am forced to (quicker to reinstall than to fix), or only when I get a whole new mobo+CPU+chipset. No reason to otherwise. Clean out the crap manually.
 
I don't reinstall. There is nothing to "clean". I keep my system clean, so it doesn't get corrupted or cluttered. Aside from windows randomly corrupting or hardware changes, you shouldn't ever have to reinstall.
 
Never, this Debian install is ~6 years old. At the very worst you should have a known good system image that you can restore when things go wrong.
 
Originally posted by: caz67
I tend to install and uninstall a lot of stuff, i guess it leaves it a bit bloated..
Click to expand...

That is because you are not properly maintaining your system after those operations.

 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Originally posted by: caz67
I tend to install and uninstall a lot of stuff, i guess it leaves it a bit bloated..
Click to expand...

That is because you are not properly maintaining your system after those operations.
Click to expand...



I think I have a handle on this, but please explain how to properly maintain the system after those operations.

 
I regularly run Defrag, and Adware, Spybot etc..I use Ghost as well to keep things in order, i sometimes download some dodgy stuff however..

Can you guys give me some other tips, as to good maintenance of your OS???
 
Originally posted by: spyordie007
Can you guys give me some other tips, as to good maintenance of your OS???
Click to expand...
*Run as a non-admin
*Install software you are testing in a test enviroment, only allow trusted software in production
Click to expand...

LOL, put the IT book down and tell the home user what they should do.
 
I reinstalled 6 months ago when i got a new mobo and some other hardware, but before that my install was fine for years. Even when you do get a new mobo you don't really need to reformat, you just need to reinstall windows and delete the old windows dir, and reinstall all your programs.
 
I've been lucky with XP.

Coincidently, I had to reformat and reinstall XP on two computers in May of 2004. I can't remember why but if it had been 98SE, I'm sure I would have done it many many times in that period.
 
Had I not destroyed my registry, my own doing not a fault of windows, my 2k Pro install would have been over two years old. Right now, I'm running the same install from September 04 with no problems.
 
Originally posted by: caz67
I regularly run Defrag, and Adware, Spybot etc..I use Ghost as well to keep things in order, i sometimes download some dodgy stuff however..

Can you guys give me some other tips, as to good maintenance of your OS???
Click to expand...

If you are properly using your PC, you won't need to run adware or spybot. Stop downloading dodgy stuff, only download things that you know won't be an issue. I'm virus free since '93, and I don't even run an active AV.
 
Originally posted by: Malak
Originally posted by: caz67
I regularly run Defrag, and Adware, Spybot etc..I use Ghost as well to keep things in order, i sometimes download some dodgy stuff however..

Can you guys give me some other tips, as to good maintenance of your OS???
Click to expand...

If you are properly using your PC, you won't need to run adware or spybot. Stop downloading dodgy stuff, only download things that you know won't be an issue. I'm virus free since '93, and I don't even run an active AV.
Click to expand...

Really, you don't run an active Anti Virus???

I don't surf porn sites or anything like that, however i visit game sites these forums etc..

 
With Windows 98 I would reinstall twice a year every year, even if it didn't seem slow. But with WinXP, I let it go as long as I keep the current hardware, ends up being like a reinstall per year, plus it's a good way to get rid of all the software I don't use but am too lazy to uninstall.
 
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