Oh I love to reformat my computer. I decided to upgrade from Firefox 1.4 to 1.6 and Norton IS decided that it did not like it and made Firefox inoperable. So I said it must be about time for a reformat, since uninstalling and installing just made the matter worse. I am just wondering how often you say to yourself "enough of this XP, OS X, DOS, etc. " and just reformat your harddrive with a fresh operating system. I tend to average 4-5 months between reformats. How about you?
How often do you reformat your computer?
- Thread starter mehmetmunur
- Start date
Ricemarine
Lifer
- Sep 10, 2004
- 10,507
- 0
- 0
Every time I download some stupid crack and realize that it's full to the brim of trojans.
Really gotta get that vmware machine back up and running.
Really gotta get that vmware machine back up and running.
Ricemarine
Lifer
- Sep 10, 2004
- 10,507
- 0
- 0
Just turn off the norton firewall and it should work.
Edit: Works for MSN Messenger too, if you happen to have the same problem with that.
WinXP.... twice since release and that was only due to whole hardware swapouts.
It still bangs out 6k in 3dmark 2005 despite not being reinstalled since august last year
It's a fallacy that reinstalls are required... you have simply been lazy with maintenance.
Linux gets installed and uninstalled all the time because I want to like it.... but it fails miserably on hardware and gaming. A month later I try a new distro and packages and find it still sucks so format again so I can use the disk space for something interesting
It still bangs out 6k in 3dmark 2005 despite not being reinstalled since august last year
It's a fallacy that reinstalls are required... you have simply been lazy with maintenance.
Linux gets installed and uninstalled all the time because I want to like it.... but it fails miserably on hardware and gaming. A month later I try a new distro and packages and find it still sucks so format again so I can use the disk space for something interesting
spherrod
Diamond Member
well checking I built this one in july 04 the first hard drive failed from worst buy so had to reinstall 30 days later still running fine.
looks like I rebuilt my wifes in april of that year still the original xp install also.
looks like I rebuilt my wifes in april of that year still the original xp install also.
I wish I could say that I was lazy and never maintained my computer. But I am not. I actually care for my operating system and my hardware a lot. I do not get viruses and malware unless I am curious enough to see if I can remove it on my own, which I was able to do a few times. I make sure that I have the latest updates from MS and Norton multiple times a day. Defragment regularly, depending on usage since I might be moving couple hundred gigs of data from my 80GB WD in a week. The only thing I do not do is to return the registry to its original size after and install/uninstall. So the registry balloons from 30some MBs to 50some MBs. And god knows what is going on with my drivers, since I have to change them every other week (or two).
Software has always been and always will be buggy. Humans make errors, and creations of humans in return must make errors. Anybody remember the infinite loop in Win95 that caused it to crash if you left it running for long? You would not have to do much with it, just leave it running and BAM! blue screen. Thank god for XP.
It might be true that reinstalls are not required, but I would rather reinstall than have to backup my registry, drivers and god knows what else to its original state because I decided to install the demo for a game.
Secondly, why would I turn off a program I am paying subscription for if it is not going to work properly with the other software I am using? This is something you do in order to troubleshoot, or diagnose a problem. It should not be a permanent solution to an incompatibility.
And after the reformat, Firefox and NIS are getting along so well. (And believe me it was not because I told NIS to block Firefox's internet access.)
I would be surprised if your(Seeruk) 3dmk05 score ever changed due to your operating system. Ultimately you are comparing a program that resides on an operating system to the operating system itself. Apples and oranges.
Why not measure a computer's boot times, shutdown times, IE, Firefox, Word, My Computer to launch, or how long it takes for you to right click on anything before and after a reinstall? I might be mistaken but most people would agree that there is a noticeable difference between such measurements for a system that has been running for 6 months versus a system that has been newly installed (all other factors being equal- i.e. same disk space, memory usage, start-up programs, defragmentation etc). And sometimes to a person like me, it might make all the difference in the world. Even if it is an illusion, it seems to make a lot of people happy. At least that is my take on the matter.
Software has always been and always will be buggy. Humans make errors, and creations of humans in return must make errors. Anybody remember the infinite loop in Win95 that caused it to crash if you left it running for long? You would not have to do much with it, just leave it running and BAM! blue screen. Thank god for XP.
It might be true that reinstalls are not required, but I would rather reinstall than have to backup my registry, drivers and god knows what else to its original state because I decided to install the demo for a game.
Secondly, why would I turn off a program I am paying subscription for if it is not going to work properly with the other software I am using? This is something you do in order to troubleshoot, or diagnose a problem. It should not be a permanent solution to an incompatibility.
And after the reformat, Firefox and NIS are getting along so well. (And believe me it was not because I told NIS to block Firefox's internet access.)
I would be surprised if your(Seeruk) 3dmk05 score ever changed due to your operating system. Ultimately you are comparing a program that resides on an operating system to the operating system itself. Apples and oranges.
Why not measure a computer's boot times, shutdown times, IE, Firefox, Word, My Computer to launch, or how long it takes for you to right click on anything before and after a reinstall? I might be mistaken but most people would agree that there is a noticeable difference between such measurements for a system that has been running for 6 months versus a system that has been newly installed (all other factors being equal- i.e. same disk space, memory usage, start-up programs, defragmentation etc). And sometimes to a person like me, it might make all the difference in the world. Even if it is an illusion, it seems to make a lot of people happy. At least that is my take on the matter.
Honestly I am a bit anal.... thus I have a spreadsheet of 3dmarks taken over the years ... and since I installed WinXP last time, i tend to retest every time I install a new driver to test stability more than anything, .... but my scores havent changed more than 30-40 marks either way depending on which way the wind is blowing and catalyst drivers ranging from 5.3 to 5.8
Point being performance has not got worse just because I havent reformatted!
3dmark measures my chipset, ram, and gfx working in harmony to produce an indication of the peak performance for my main priority...gaming! Why dont I measure any application launching times, or any other measure? Well simply because a machine specced like below should open it instantly regardless... and still does! My machine boots in under 30 secs consistently because I don't have a bunch of crap in my startup or system tray. I run lean and mean if I need AV (twice in maybe the last 4-5 years since XP was released) I use a boot disk, if that fails I manually remove it. Nothing screws up your machine's performance over time more than AV's like Norton and McAfee.
As you mentioned... god knows whats going with your drivers... again something that can really screw up your machine over time is leaving bits of old drivers around. Do you uninstall drivers before installing the new ones? Or just install over the top (=V BAD!)? If you do uninstall do you not just use the control panel, but then also go and delete the source files, delete the files and registry bits even the uninstalls leave behind?
Defragging can make performance worse! Especially when it concerns drives containing large textures used in games. If you own EQ2 ... defrag the drive it is installed on and watch your FPS drop from 80 to 8 like mine did! Like wise with BF2 when it has done all the optimising of your shaders only for some defrag program to come and move everything around again! Standard apps are affected like this but a lot of high-graphics games are savaged by a defrag!
Just a few things I have found over time - all can be simplified into routines/scheduled activities or simple batch files.
Point being performance has not got worse just because I havent reformatted!
3dmark measures my chipset, ram, and gfx working in harmony to produce an indication of the peak performance for my main priority...gaming! Why dont I measure any application launching times, or any other measure? Well simply because a machine specced like below should open it instantly regardless... and still does! My machine boots in under 30 secs consistently because I don't have a bunch of crap in my startup or system tray. I run lean and mean if I need AV (twice in maybe the last 4-5 years since XP was released) I use a boot disk, if that fails I manually remove it. Nothing screws up your machine's performance over time more than AV's like Norton and McAfee.
As you mentioned... god knows whats going with your drivers... again something that can really screw up your machine over time is leaving bits of old drivers around. Do you uninstall drivers before installing the new ones? Or just install over the top (=V BAD!)? If you do uninstall do you not just use the control panel, but then also go and delete the source files, delete the files and registry bits even the uninstalls leave behind?
Defragging can make performance worse! Especially when it concerns drives containing large textures used in games. If you own EQ2 ... defrag the drive it is installed on and watch your FPS drop from 80 to 8 like mine did! Like wise with BF2 when it has done all the optimising of your shaders only for some defrag program to come and move everything around again! Standard apps are affected like this but a lot of high-graphics games are savaged by a defrag!
Just a few things I have found over time - all can be simplified into routines/scheduled activities or simple batch files.
usually once a year, when I need to update my norton subscription. when I ran win98/ME a few years ago, I would reformate maybe once every 2 years, WinXP's unreliability has seen this drop the the standard once a year
Windows box, Every 6-14 months
Linux box, Never. Wish the damn thing would die so I would have an excuse to move from red crap 9 to gentoo on it.
Linux box, Never. Wish the damn thing would die so I would have an excuse to move from red crap 9 to gentoo on it.
My work computer hasn't been reformatted/reinstalled in a year and a half. My laptop however is my toy - sometimes I get the notion to play with linux, so it gets wiped trying different distros then going back to Windows. Plus I test all programs on it before I do anything funky to my work computer.
sourceninja
Diamond Member
- Mar 8, 2005
- 8,805
- 65
- 91
Never, I tipically sell my pc's at the end of the year. So I go one year per PC, then I build a bigger one.
Although my servers have been running linux for years with no issues.
Although my servers have been running linux for years with no issues.
Originally posted by: Seeruk
WinXP.... twice since release and that was only due to whole hardware swapouts.
It still bangs out 6k in 3dmark 2005 despite not being reinstalled since august last year
It's a fallacy that reinstalls are required... you have simply been lazy with maintenance.
Linux gets installed and uninstalled all the time because I want to like it.... but it fails miserably on hardware and gaming. A month later I try a new distro and packages and find it still sucks so format again so I can use the disk space for something interesting
Quoted for Truth.
Schadenfroh
Elite Member
- Mar 8, 2003
- 38,416
- 4
- 0
LOL.......I'm bored and have a day off....my comp has been pissing me off since I got rid of norton......gonna reinstall......only did it 3 weeks ago when I upgraded to A64!!!!
I formatted a couple days ago, and it was the first time since getting my laptop.
I did it because it hadn't been done in a while, and also because I needed a partition for osx86
But in general I format once a year with winXP, more if I'm messing around installing linux or whatever. With win98 I would format every 2-3 months
I did it because it hadn't been done in a while, and also because I needed a partition for osx86
But in general I format once a year with winXP, more if I'm messing around installing linux or whatever. With win98 I would format every 2-3 months
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