Re-imaging ?

What is your opinion of re-imaging your Thinkpad every couple of months to keep system healthy?

 

As in reinstalling a clean installation of Windows? I'd say do it if you feel a slowdown and believe it's necessary, but I think if you're careful with what and how many programs you install, you should be fine for years.

 

I think that is way too much work for most people to deal with.

Do you happen to have a fully automated network that lets you backup the personal data and state, then re-image with the OS, Apps, security patches, data and state? Most people don't.

 

Back in the days of Windows 98 I found it pretty beneficial to wipe a system every couple months, but these days I've got XP installs several years old floating around without much problem.

Of course, if you're got the infrastructure in place to manage systems, it doesn't really hurt to do so... at least at my university we "clean" our public machines daily.

 

I don't install crap on my work system so it runs for years without fault Virtual Machines are for the experiments.
My "re-imaging" is generally a full OS reinstall when new Windows comes out

 

I reimage frequently. I like to keep everything fresh. If you have a full system backup then I honestly see nothing wrong with reimaging every month or two. It's certainly much faster than reinstalling the OS from scratch. I just format with gparted, and reimage, and I'm good to go in 10 minutes or so.

Windows Vista and 7 have built-in backup solutions that allow you to do a complete backup of your system to optical disc. You don't need an automated network for that.

 

What's the point of just wiping the drive and putting things back to exactly as they were? Not cynical, it just doesn't make sense to me.

I do a clean OS reinstall once or twice a year. It's pretty painless with System Update. Just need to reinstall apps and transfer media back from the back up location.

 

Because if anything goes wrong, you have a full backup and can restore your system in minutes to the same exact state as before. It just so happens that it's a convenient way to keep your system fresh as well.

 

Every two months? That was the original question and it seems silly to me. why on earth?

Backups are one thing. Flattening a box every 8 weeks is different.

 

The full back-up parts makes great sense. Putting the same image and all it's accumulated inefficiencies back, doesn't.