how often do you guys format and reinstall your OS

Earlier I used to format my pc and reinstall os almost every month .....but Now its 6 months since my last OS reinstallation....and everything seems to be going fine now....
So how often do u guys reinstall the OS on ur pc.

 

I reformat as necessary... I haven't noticed any slowdown with my clean install of Windows 7 that I did a bit less than one year back, so I don't intend to mess with it anytime soon. If you're careful with programs you install (notably, don't install every single piece of software that you see, and will never use), particularly with startup items, you shouldn't need to clean install much if at all.

 

I'm like MidnightSun, though I was finding I was having to reinstall more often because I would install every piece of software I had, and got too messy. Now I have a short and sweet list of software that I'll actually use, and that's all I'll install... I'm in the midst of backing up all my data so I can install Windows 7 back on my laptop.

 

Windows 7 has been extremely kind to me, and i haven't had to reformat.

for xp, and vista, i did about every 6 months

 

I only reformat when I need to, which was about 3 months ago. Prior to that I did not format until I was building this computer. The reason for this current 3 month 'reformat' was because I got a hold of a nasty bug on this computer OR rather it got a hold of this computer.

I've got "Frankenstein" computers that I reformat practically every week just to test certain OS's out or test software out so that I don't ruin my main computer. I also test out Linux...

 

I reformat and reinstall my OS only as needed, which is usually due to hard drive failure. In fact, I just reformatted and reinstalled my Windows Vista OS yesterday and this was the 1st time I had done so without a hard drive failure; in this case, I did this because my notebook PC was exhibiting some idiosyncratic behavior, such as inexplicably highlighting blocks of text while typing, and these text blocks would be erased if I wasn't watching closely and continued typing after the text was highlighted. I need more time to determine if the reformat/reinstall rectified the problem.

 

Today - about 4 or 5 times.

Prior to that - usually every six months or so. This is using Windows 7. I don't notice any slowdown, but I like to wipe the slate clean.

 

^^^
why on gods green earth would u be reinstalling OS for 5 times daily...
seems like daily u r trying to make the system work rather than working on ur system.

 

Not "daily", but "today".

He's having driver issues with Intel software and keeps reinstalling the OS.

 

Haha, pretty much what anseio said. RST is being a PITA, and I don't like using System Restore, as I've had some bad experiences with it.

 

i normally reinstall once per new hardware. that means new pc, or new hdd/ssd.

 

Er, never unless I need to (I have only ever had to once in my 6 years of having a laptop)

Why bother?

 

+1 on that. If it ain't broke, why screw with it? Unless ya ain't smart enuff not to click that little box on the pop-up thet sez 'Click Here' and gets a virus...

 

Huh??? I install my OS once, and that's it, for the useful life of the machine (which can reach 5+ years). If I upgrade the hard drive, then I'll copy a disk image from the old drive to the new one, and that's it.

Oh, and if the OS doesn't change with a new machine I am getting, then I'll also transfer my disk image to a new computer in order to save the time to reinstall and reconfigure all of my software. Which is A LOT of time otherwise...

 

Os lives as long as the hardware at me had win xp running for 5+ years 24/7.

Same vista runs on the lg r700 notebook even after I sold it to friend.

When you learned os from dos/win 3.1 up it's not that hard to know how to maintain and clean.

On my g51j atm:
186 programs installed at least what shows up in win7 programs and features, but I install programs manually copy and regedit too

Easy to use sandbox to try things ....

 

The last few times I reformatted were for odd reasons.

Most recent was to fix a Touchpad driver error that basically toasted my system when it said It needed to be uninstalled; add to the fact that Windows Backup just stopped working altogether and I never found a way to fix it and I decided to just reformat.

The most recent before that was a good 7 months, and that was only to upgrade to Win 7 Ultimate from 7 Pro...

I don't remember why I reformatted before that

 

I reinstall the OS on the same machine only when a new OS comes out XP -> Vista (which wasn't as bad as they people claim especially after SP2) -> Win 7

 

With Vista i found myself reformatting every 6-8months. Mainly because Vista had a lot of issues.

With W7, i havent reformatted since the RTM release.

 

i don't format unless there is a HDD failure which require fresh install or a major problem that i can't find a fix for it

 

Every MONTH? Whoa. I'm exclusively on Win 7, and I do mine every 6-9 months now, and so far it's because I've gone from an HDD to an SSD or reconfigured due to my hard drives. Not necessarily because it's needed it (well except for a couple secure erases of an SSD), not because of the OS. If you need to reformat every month, then maybe use some virtual machines if you are trashing your OS with certain things you're doing.

With XP it was maybe every year.

 

I never reformat and reinstall period. It is a complete waste of precious time and completely unnecessary regardless of what Operating System you are running unless there is no other choice.

Just in case I may need to go back to a completely fresh state of OS, I have various image snapshots. I have one done after a fresh install after all basic Drivers have been configured and then I have another image after everything else has been installed.

 

Windows 7 x64 now for over a year and I've only done it once when I re-built my system. Otherwise, I really have no plans to do so.

 

I used to do it alot with my desktop but that was a few years ago,with vista and all,but now with my laptop it seems everything runs smooth and win7 is kinda like being on cruise control it does a good job of keeping itself running smooth.
Unless i get a bad virus or something i see no need for all the reinstalling of windows all the time.

 

All of my machines are on Windows 7 and have never had a OS reinstall. I don't see doing one either unless there is a hardware failure or some other irrecoverable problem. all the installs work wonderfully.

Even Vista had to have 6-12 month redo's. Although PDxx would keep the installs pretty good eventually it would just lag too much.

 

What about the os getting bloated with all the registry entries and junk files left in your system during frequent installation or changing softwares/hardwares

 

CCleaner will help a lot with this imo.

 

Registry is becoming less of an importance in NT Architecture hence performance in Vista/7 is not hampered by registry.

 

Every 30 to 90 days I install an Image I maintain of whatever machine I use daily, the older machines fall off after I get a new one.

I keep an image starting with the base install from the manufacturer, then add the software I always use. When more software is added to the list I just restore the image, install whatever and then redo the image.

Saves a ton of time versus a normal wipe and restore and allows me to reset the machine more often. Takes me maybe 2 hours to copy over my file backup and get my settings where they need to be from that. Very much NOT necessary but it does clean up the mess, performance, and worries about malware.

 

huge amount of work for nothing, clutch. but if you like it

 

2 hours x every 90 days = 8 hours a year minimum... all of the imaging and restoring happens when I am doing something else, nothing lost there. Most people waste that much of their life staring at a screen doing jack.

Yeah lol as i said not necessary. Unlike some people I dont wait around while things are going on or if it requires interaction i do it while im doing something. I usually do most of my work while catching up on tv, or if its something that takes awhile I just walk away. Thats why I own a laptop, trying todo anything with a desktop just slows me down and wastes valuable time.

Found it funny that this thread was going on, I haven't done it in many months, laptop actually went unused for a portion of time so I decided todo it now. Just waiting for almost 1TB of data to finish offloading. I need BIGGER drives, I actually think the 500 gig primary is gonna kick the bucket soon its being a bit funny.

 

Buy an additional 2.5" harddisk with 3 year warranty from OEM.
Image your System Disc on a weekly basis. If anything happens to your current system swap the disk and reimage it again.
Rinse and Repeat.
Do the imaging overnight when you are sleeping.

 

Or buy a laptop with two drive bays, RAID 1, no worries unless both drives fail, or the laptop is stolen/damaged. You still need to backup, just kinda takes care of that whole imaging thing.

I could never run RAID 1 because of drive capacity issues. Id be stuck doing what you suggested if I was worried about down time.

 

I TOTALLY AGREE with this.
They think they are productive entertaining themselves on a TV Set but fail to recognize the action of watching Trashy TV wastes their life.

 

Such a laptop will be too heavy for comfort.
Just use the Internal SATA connectors for Drive Imaging.
The point of imaging is to have a drop in replacement in the likelihood of failure.

 

I think this "beast" is like 7 something pounds. I do often wish for something lighter. But when your aim is a desktop replacement, you got to deal with some compromise. 2 drive bays was a must for me.

If i had not killed the drive controller I could use eSATA for the backups. I had to rebuild the enclosure to use USB, was being cheap using free parts I had. 1TB over USB, is slow especially once it gets down to about half speed like it does.

I am starting to think I want another desktop and when this dies just get a large netbook or ultralight laptop. Then I smack myself.

 

i only reinstall if i need to
my old desktop pc has XP that was installed in 2003
my laptop has win 7 64bit since it came out
both running fine

 

Felt like posting now that she is all done. Yay for feeling so fresh and clean.... Geeze this image needs updating lol.

 

Of course if you have an SSD, think twice about reimaging all the time. Most apps going from an SSD to same SSD shouldn't have an issue with alignment, but something you might want to check. Plus constant writes to your SSD can be detrimental. I'm not saying to worry about it, but reimaging once a month is excessive by any means.

Whatever you're doing that needs to be reimaged, just run a virtual machine.

 

to often... i.e. whenever I break something... although now I have an easier solution Windows Home Server.

I've had Vista run well for 6+ months - and whenever something broke it was my fault... last time was summer... Recuva was at fault... since then it's been 6 months without an issue
-> that would make it twice since getting my SSD - first when I got it, once when I broke the OS with Recuva in summer.

Now I have a Home Server

 

Good to hear you have WHS. It's a great tool isn't it? Daily backups, network storage, web access to your files, media streaming. It's a little quirky, but the community seems to have come up with solutions for everything that MS didn't.

 

Indeed

(10 characters)

 

Used to format every months or so, but since I use Windows 7 I never format that frequently. Create a disc image backup and restore it in case of anything happen. Reinstalling software and set them up is tedious and time consuming task

 

That it is. However, the nice thing is that Win 7 installs so quickly especially if you go from a fast USB thumb drive to an SSD. Probably less than 15 minutes, more likely much less, haven't timed it. I usually have the normal suite of apps downloaded, and that usually takes me the longest to download all of the apps and latest drivers. Just a PITA still, to have to reboot so many times even these days. But even so, it's still at least half the time of Windows XP.

I also wish MS would keep a single file with all the security updates up to date so that you could download one file and run it manually instead of having to go through the whole windows update hoo haa. I haven't bothered to see if it's possible or even worth to slipstream a Win7 install.

 

I used to every 2-3th month, but since Windows 7, I have not noticed any slowdowns, but this may due to sorting out what I need and not. I've left all the unnecessary software and things out...

 

I do lol. Yeah no SSD for me until they hit larger than available laptop conventional capacities and then from there priced no more than a conventional desktop.... which will happen in oh I dunno whenever Monster Cable finally starts selling 1 dollar whatever the latest cable is cable's.

I have little to gain from such expenditures and alot of space to lose. I do remember the first time i switched a machine over from pata to sata and installed xp, it installed soooo fast. Only thing holding it back was the optical drive. SSD's are nice.

 

every 2 or 3 mouths. . . ~, ~

 

well, my reinstalls are about half an our work if at all (os itself 7 minutes, and then it's up and runnable while doing some updates, so while i install the rest i can actually work/browse/chat what ever). and i do it once for each new machine / new os / new harddisk/ssd, that means even if it's just 8h saved a year, it's SAVED.

i spend enough time doing useless stuff. i don't need to spend it on my computers.

oh, and, whs ftw. i have 5.5tb of storage for all my stuff, unimportant on which machine.

 

hh dave I would have more data if I had a place to put it all. I can fill any hard drive they can make, fact is they couldnt make one to challenge people like us and probably never will. I dont use it anymore but my minidvcam was 13gb an hour and I shoot raw with my dSLR and atleast 1000 clicks a month, things fill up quick on that alone.

 

So?

Get some tape storage + a Windows Home Server.
Possibly have about 17TB in the Home Server (if you expand it) - or you could have a 40TB build from a UK company (just I don't trust UK products... bad experiences...) - then once that fills up, transfer all the stuff you no longer actively need to tapes

I believe they hold a couple of TB a piece

 

so better get some save storage (nas with raid, whs with duplication on, etc) where you can collect all of it together. and not have to distribute onto different disks manually so you won't find it anymore, a disk crash kills half your collection, etc..

i know that one can quickly fill hdds like nothing when recording hd movies, my dad has a hd camera and films everything. winhomeserver is the perfect solution for him (or drobo, or a big nas, or what ever). it's great because it grows by just plugging a new disk in, and voilà: bigger storage.

that just if you never looked yet at such solutions. if you have the money, a drobo would be nice i guess.



(hi detlev winhomeserver ftw!!)