How old is your windows install?

Devrij

Devrij

Devrij

Soldato
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I was sitting here thinking "man I think this install is coming up on 6 years now, time to fresh install and start over", but I just checked and it seems I did that in November last year. I'm already feeling like my install is full of bloat and crap. Loads of virtual devices, hangovers from software that never quite fully uninstalls etc. I wonder if this is more symptomatic of the amount of devices and stuff I run on my pc and all the bloatware that comes with them to do the things I need (looking at you kb and mouse just to have those profiles set up).

How often do you guys wipe the slate clean?
 
I keep an image of windows with the basics installed
Anytime i feel windows is running poorly
Or some problem I can't pin down
I just restore the image as its much faster than troubleshooting
As have all m2 drives and sata ssds
Including where the images are stored
Macrium can restore it faster than it takes me
To go get a cup of tea

Though I have several drives with windows installed
As always have several backup strategies
So might go 6 months without a restore
Or might be days,weeks,months
Depending how it's behaving/misbehaving
 
My current install is 9 months old. Was a clean install when I built this PC over Christmas 2024
 
6 months or so, new build PC so it's been clean installed.

I use to always keep a backup as Mcnumpty does but these days it's pretty painless to reinstalled Windows and update on gigabit fibre. I only do it when major hardware changes are done. I'd run W11 since it was released prior to this.

My oldest install is my wife W10 install her PC was setup with W10 the month it came out and has just happily updated ever since.
 
Yeah with high speed Internet
It's not so bad
Reinstalling windows is pretty fast tbh
It's all the other software that takes the time
Plus I forget all the little tweaks I previously did
So my image has keyboard, mouse,rgb etc software on it
And the tweaks like the ones I am just
Playing around with
1 click shortcut to restart PC and it boots into bios
And because have multiple windows drives
Am playing with 1 click shortcut that restarts pc
And boots to other drives without me having to select
Which drive i want to reboot to in the boot menu
And other little tweaks I like to use that just make things work
With a few less clicks
 
I just replaced my N54L with a NUC and the HP had the same Windows 10 on it since 2015, it upgraded from W7 to 10, iirc. It had 7 for a couple of years.
So 10 years with an upgraded same install OS to 10.


I am more likely, on my main machine, to restore a known working image that start fresh, if appropriate.
 
Last edited:
Since I built my current (for the next week or so) PC (4770k), so 2014 and Windows 8.0 > 8.1 > 10
 
I last did a fresh install when this was on Vista. Ever since then it's been in-place upgraded each time and cloned over to new OS drives as time went on between system upgrades etc.

It runs as fast as a fresh install thanks to as tight routine of manual maintenance keeping old leftovers from games and apps uninstalled etc in check and general common sense.
 
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