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How often do you reformat your computer?

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I've reformatted my work computer about 4 times in the past year. I do have 2 hdd's though, so I always have the trusty debian stable to fall back to, but I like to install and try different things. What's great is that I can try a distro out for a couple of months, boot back into my debian install, and everything is ready to go.
 
Once in the last three years and only becasue my browser was hosed. Took the opportunity to upgrade to XP Pro SP2 at the same time.

Properly cared for, reformatting a PC should be a fairly rare event.
 
I just ripped a system apart and posted some of it for sale - college preparations. 🙂
Its installation of WinXP was going to be 2 years old this October.
The installation on my mom's PC is nearly 4 years old.
 
How often do you reformat your computer?

I reformat my temp drive all the time.

But I will only reformat my regular drive, if there is something wrong.
 
The windows machines about every 2-3 months as needed. The linux machines only when I do a complete OS upgrade, except the debian machines.
 
Originally posted by: TonyRic
The windows machines about every 2-3 months as needed. The linux machines only when I do a complete OS upgrade, except the debian machines.
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What In the heck you doing to that poor thing that you have to format every 2-3 months?
 
only when it's required. This installation has lasted through 4 motherboards 3 CPUs several video cards, many PCI cards, and about 6 hard drive upgrades.
 
lol @ u all....

I only take about 1-2 hours to do a full reinstall.....

I have a little process that I go through before I reinstall such as finding saved games, outlook express stuff and anything else that is important to me...(although my most important stuff that I want to keep is written to a DVD periodically)..

My win xp Disk has been heavily modified too....it is a slipstreamed XP pro SP2 disk on DVD so there is a lot of spare space....I have all my main programs that I use slipstreamed into the install for minimum hassle when installing....it is all automated too so all I have to do is put the CD in the drive.....change my bios to boot CD first and then walk away......come back in 50 minutes and there is a fresh install waiting for me...then all I do is reinstall my favourite games...BF2 and HL2 at the moment and that is it!!!
 
ol @ u all....

I only take about 1-2 hours to do a full reinstall.....

I have a little process that I go through before I reinstall such as finding saved games, outlook express stuff and anything else that is important to me...(although my most important stuff that I want to keep is written to a DVD periodically)..

My win xp Disk has been heavily modified too....it is a slipstreamed XP pro SP2 disk on DVD so there is a lot of spare space....I have all my main programs that I use slipstreamed into the install for minimum hassle when installing....it is all automated too so all I have to do is put the CD in the drive.....change my bios to boot CD first and then walk away......come back in 50 minutes and there is a fresh install waiting for me...then all I do is reinstall my favourite games...BF2 and HL2 at the moment and that is it!!!
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We should be laughing at you, you've obviously put a lot of time into streamlining something that should only happen in very rare instances.
 
haven't reformatted my winxp box for like over a year i think. just recently i upgraded my hard drive so i used acronis true image.
 
Originally posted by: mehmetmunur
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.
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you actually use NIS? I've never understood it's value.

It seems no matter how many backups I do I always forget something. Hence, my reformats are as rare as possible.
 
Originally posted by: mehmetmunur
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?
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2 or 3 years... whenever I build a new PC.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
ol @ u all....

I only take about 1-2 hours to do a full reinstall.....

I have a little process that I go through before I reinstall such as finding saved games, outlook express stuff and anything else that is important to me...(although my most important stuff that I want to keep is written to a DVD periodically)..

My win xp Disk has been heavily modified too....it is a slipstreamed XP pro SP2 disk on DVD so there is a lot of spare space....I have all my main programs that I use slipstreamed into the install for minimum hassle when installing....it is all automated too so all I have to do is put the CD in the drive.....change my bios to boot CD first and then walk away......come back in 50 minutes and there is a fresh install waiting for me...then all I do is reinstall my favourite games...BF2 and HL2 at the moment and that is it!!!
Click to expand...

We should be laughing at you, you've obviously put a lot of time into streamlining something that should only happen in very rare instances.
Click to expand...


I can see why you would say that......but I have been running an Athlon xp 1800 up until about 3-4 weeks ago and any clutter slowed it down(especially when I try to run new games on older hardware!)....so I spent some time and learned some stuff by doing some research on the net and I believe I have more than had a return on the spent time in time saved during installs....I also like to tinker a lot(both with software and my hardware) and find that if something does go wrong then I don't need to stress out about losing stuff that I need..

Come on you know it makes sense.......A lot of people don't clean up their operating systems as often as they should because of the time and hassle, but with my method I am not worried about losing stuff and it takes about as long as watching an episode of my favourite TV program. I am also a lot more confident with windows and lots of other programs because of the tinkering that I do.....<-----Method behind the madness!!!
 
but I have been running an Athlon xp 1800 up until about 3-4 weeks ago and any clutter slowed it down(especially when I try to run new games on older hardware!)
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I've had my latest work machine for at least 6 months and it performs just as well as it did when I got it. Obviously I'm not running games on it, hell it doesn't even have an AGP or PCI-X slot, but with proper care and maintenance you should never need to reload your system.

Come on you know it makes sense.......A lot of people don't clean up their operating systems as often as they should because of the time and hassle, but with my method I am not worried about losing stuff and it takes about as long as watching an episode of my favourite TV program. I am also a lot more confident with windows and lots of other programs because of the tinkering that I do.....<-----Method behind the madness!!!
Click to expand...

Having backups that you can restore from in a timely fashion makes sense, but doing it periodically to avoid taking care of the sytem doesn't. The machine I'm typing on right now was installed ~6 years ago, infact I don't think any of the hardware is the same as when the OS was originally installed.
 
I find that reinstalling the OS IS a part of the maintenance process......all too often with my constant installing/uninstalling of stuff my registry gets cluttered........Oh sod it...that is a crap excuse 😱:disgust:
I guess I just like to know that I have my computer running as well as it can....Personal preference...not a need!
 
I know my computer runs as well as it can because I know how it and all of the software installed on it work and when something is wrong, I fix it instead of blasting over the problem with a restore CD.
 
Once or twice a year with XP. Now running Freebsd as a desktop and I literally set and forget installation since I rarely need to reinstall anything.
 
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