What do you guys do to clean your system?

[oog]

partition magic allows you to adjust partitions without reinstalling. i think there was something in hotdeals for partition magic 8.0 for free after rebate. i don't know if that's only for an upgrade though. there are other partitioning tools from the linux world that may work, but i don't have enough experience with them to say if they'll work for you.

 

[TechHead87]

I just use CCleaner. I use it before going through http://theflyingpenguin.com/spyware-removal.shtml <-- The Flying Penguins spyware removal site almost daily.

Gotta do it, especially since I'm not the only one who uses this computer.

*edit*
I'm almost reluctant to use any imaging prog's....if something goes "uh oh", you're screwed.

 

[firewall]

I downloaded the trialware version of Acronis TI 9 but it is unable to contact the registration database even when I am using a DSL connection. That is required before installation so it isn't installing. Furthermore, on the front page of Acronis' site, there are plenty of compliments about it but the forums are full of people who are facing numerous bugs and problems with TI 9.

 

[tigertunes]

i reformat at least once every 6 months , defrag maybe once a month

 

[masked1]

does defrag actually do anything apart from taking ages and ages to perform?

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: TechHead87
I just use CCleaner. I use it before going through http://theflyingpenguin.com/spyware-removal.shtml <-- The Flying Penguins spyware removal site almost daily.

Gotta do it, especially since I'm not the only one who uses this computer.

*edit*
I'm almost reluctant to use any imaging prog's....if something goes "uh oh", you're screwed.

Wow, that's alot of maintainance for one day. I think I would retrain the other users of hte computer/give them limited access/switch to an OS less venerable if I had to do that every single day.

 

[firewall]

Originally posted by: masked1
does defrag actually do anything apart from taking ages and ages to perform?

Traditional defragmenting sucks big time!

I use Executive Software's Diskeeper 9 Professional. It is very very fast as compared to traditional defragmentation since it only defragments the files that require it, not all files. I used Norton Speed Disk previously. I didn't noticed any performance differences between the two at the end of defragmentation which, for me, means that it gets the job done perfectly but in much lesser time.

 

[masked1]

if you dont notice any difference after you have perfomed defrag, whats the point in doing it in the first place?

 

[firewall]

No, I meant difference b/w Norton Speed Disk and Executive Software's Diskeeper 9. There is obvious improvement felt in frequently used applications on my PC. The advantage is that while Norton Speed Disk took hours to do the defragmentation, Diskeeper does it in 10 to 15 minutes depending on the level of fragmentation.

 

[KoolDrew]

All my important stuff is on a seperate partition then my OS.

 

[swamyg1]

I used to use Ghost, but I found that TrueImage 8 is WAAAAAAY better and more reliable. I restore images all the time and don't know how I would be able to manage without it. I think it's a vital program for anybody that cares about their computer, files, etc. PEACOUT!

 

[kurt454]

Backup files and Ghost for me.

 

[Sunner]

I tend to just wait until I change a bunch of hardware, such as mobo/cpu, then reinstall.

 

[Jojo1971]

Originally posted by: nweaver
imaging on raid0 is hard, as usually raid0 on motherboards is "driver" based, and not a true hardware solution, so the image program sees 2 drives, with odd partitions.

this is the situation which forced me to switch to acronis 8.0 from ghost... i cannot clone my RAID-O using norton ghost....IMHO, acronis is better than ghost...

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Jojo1971

Originally posted by: nweaver
imaging on raid0 is hard, as usually raid0 on motherboards is "driver" based, and not a true hardware solution, so the image program sees 2 drives, with odd partitions.

this is the situation which forced me to switch to acronis 8.0 from ghost... i cannot clone my RAID-O using norton ghost....IMHO, acronis is better than ghost...

Never run into a problem imaging a raid system of any type. Pretty much all of your entry level PC raid is hardware based although it uses your CPU rather than an onboard processor to do work. Not really much of an issue if you have no parity calculations. If the imaging software is seeing two drives instead of one then you are not in DOS (using int13 or whatnot), your raid controller bios isn't set right, or you are in Windows and the imaging software is not pulling data off the top of the mass storage+filter drivers.

As for me, I've just got full backups + system state to an external drive then more important stuff Rar'd up and put on DVD for extra protection.

Imaging would make no sense to me. My image would be hopelessly out of date since the last time I installed XP was like 3-4 years ago when it first came out. I've been through 2-3 motherboards, 3 cpus, a mass storage controller, video, sound all that, two service packs and who knows how many software installs/uninstalls. System is 100% stable, I've had a couple crashes this year due to nvidia driver glitches (sh1t happens I guess) but that's about it.

Why on Earth someone technically saavy would need to regularly rebuild a machine is beyond me. The last time I was in that situation was with Windows 9x like six years ago.

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: Doom Machine
i reinstall all the time, sometimes 2 or 3 times in a week but average once a month, on my machine i never could get any image program to work on my raid 0, tried acronis9,ghost,rdrive,winimage,restoreit but none would restore, either they dont work well for raid or dont like my hardware but if they work on your machine i would go for acronis 9, has a nice F11 boot feature to restore if you system wont load windows

WTH for?