So many of us know about how we should reformat PCs (aka XP) to keep it from getting bloated...

That is due to the registry right?

Would that explain why my desktop is getting pretty "slow" on 1GB of RAM and XP? It is not as "spiffy" as it once was. Although I'll be upgrading the RAM on it, it still bothers me why it is having such problems.

Also, does the same occur for Vista? My desktop is about 2 months older than my Vista laptop and my laptop has no signs of "slowdown" really. So I'm it is one of the things they MAY have fixed?

 

Nope, it still does it with Vista. Just depends on your workload. If you upgrade or update a program many times, eventually it's registry will 'pile' up and thus slow down your computer. CCleaner does a good job with cleaning up this mess but isn't a 100% useful. It's like putting a bigger band-aid on top of another smaller one. Eventually you're going to need to ripe them apart and start fresh.

Also, some people reformat due to spyware, adware, and virus issues.

 

First of all I reinstall the operating system on my desktop every month and on my laptop every 2 or 3 months. Why do I do this? Like you said, to clean out the registry and all the bloatness
Vista is a bit different though. It doesn't get clogged up and bogged down as quickly I don't think. Though now that I think of it xp doens't really get bogged down to fast. But I think a reinstall of your OS about every 6 months is a good way to maintain a fast pc

 

Oh, I'm not saying Vista is immune, it just seems more resilient. I'll probably reformat in a month or so give or take. Once I'm done with classes.

 

Wow, you must either have a lot of free time on your hands, or you do a lot of installing/uninstalling and/or hacking your registry. Personally, I have way too many applications that I use on a daily basis to go re-installing every month. You might want to try doing a good cleanup every week instead of wiping your machine. That's a lot faster and it will keep you machine running just fine. I never reinstalled XP on any of my machines, and I never lost any speed, because I kept my machine tuned.

 

i reinstall xp just for fun, maybe i'm sick in the head...
maybe that's why they gave me those pills??

 

In my experience, ccleaner, defrag software, and more momory= no slowdowsn
if you do this in a regular daily basis

 

It was made to work with bigger memory so it has a better management for that. XP starts fast and clogs down quickly while Vista stays on medium for a long time.

 

I reinstall Windows about once a year or so. I use CCleaner and Registry Cleaner on a regular basis and it stays fairly clean. I also am less likely to install questionable programs these days. I actually have a separate Windows partition on my desktop for that. Too many headaches in the past to just go forward and install everything I download.

 

I reformat my OS when it feels like I installed too many games/apps on it already. Or just when something horrible happened. Like sometimes how uninstalling a normal software would uninstall the OS.... Or doing a disk cleanup which really CLEANED UPPED my hard drive...

 

save an image of a freshly clean installed vista, keep it in your external. Next time you wanna do a clean install, it will only take minutes just to load the image

 

I'm probably getting ready to reformat my XP machine soon. It's been 6 months, and the last couple weeks it has been showing signs of "Windows Rot".

 

Anyone interested......

The 'Clean Install' Thread below is created for Dells and gains alot of response as well as the 'Tips and Tweaks Guide' which I believe may be the nets top tweaking guide as it has now been reproduced in a few different languages and gains monstrous attention.

It has received over 1042 hits per day since it was first created..

 

Good advice (its what I do ).