How often do people reinstall their operating system

unclebob123

unclebob123

unclebob123

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28 Jul 2007
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and why?

Just out of curiosity

I've only had my pc for 6 months and installed vista on it, but am considering a reintsallation because I dont like how i have it set up. I want to have all my programs on a separate parition from the os.
 
Every few months just to keep it all clean. :) I normally use nLite to help me cut down on the stuff in XP I don't need or want meaning its a bit quicker to install and XP is that little bit quicker and tidier from the beginning.

I will be reinstalling when I get home from Uni. I want to properly slipstream SP3 into XP and I also want to remove all traces of the rubbish software my uni make us install to allow us access to the network.
 
Whenever I feel my PC is getting a bit sluggish, or when I want to "streamline" what I've got installed a bit,and cut down the myriad of software installed. Usually 3-5 times a year. I can reinstall Windows in the time it takes to watch a film, and have every last app installed, set up, and customised in another film-length. Easy evening's work :).
 
Makhaira said:
Whenever I feel my PC is getting a bit sluggish, or when I want to "streamline" what I've got installed a bit,and cut down the myriad of software installed. Usually 3-5 times a year. I can reinstall Windows in the time it takes to watch a film, and have every last app installed, set up, and customised in another film-length. Easy evening's work :).
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Pretty much the same here as above.

My main desktop system at home is used mostly for web design and development work, so I like to keep it running in "tip-top" condition.

I have two backup hard drives in the system that I back all important folders onto and then just use Acronis to reinstall a copy of my OS to my C drive.
 
If you're snowdog never ever ever, if you're everyone else, every so often when something gets a bit iffy, or new PC etc... If you're anal, every other month maybe :p

:D
 
every 6 months or so. had the misfortune of using my brothers rig while mine was down for a few weeks. dont think he's done a format and reinstall for a year or so, talk about mind numbingly sluggish.
 
LeperousDust said:
If you're snowdog never ever ever, if you're everyone else, every so often when something gets a bit iffy, or new PC etc... If you're anal, every other month maybe :p

:D
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Xp: Never, XP install is still going strong...

Vista: 3 times installed since it was out:
First time was just to try it.
2nd time it didn't like a mobo change ( current xp happily accepted the 5th or 6th mainboard in it's lifetime :))
3rd time was coz the hdd with vista on it gave the click of death.


You should see my dad, he has had many many more mainboards on his xp install than me ( mainly coz the fool keeps selling the board/pc he's using atm himself, and coz it was originally a p3 800 mhz :D).
 
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snowdog said:
You should see my dad, he has had many many more mainboards on his xp install than me :D.
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didnt think it was possible to do that. im on my second rig and i purchased another oem copy of xp for this second build, perhaps im to honest:o
 
Oh I forgot to say my reason:

I cba to reinstall all this, besides that pic is from a year ago, now I have even much more:



Prolly one more full page of apps by now.
 
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wow im pretty surprised by the frequency of some peoples reinstalls.

Whats the best way to go out doing so?

Im guessing just copy across all files you want to keep to another drive, then just boot to cd and install? or should I fully format the drive first and if so how?

Then obviously install drivers for mother board and gfx then programs?

Actually could someone just briefly take me though their methodology step by step from beginning to end. Also if it a goo idea to have programs installed on a separate partion?

Thanks
 
eXor said:
OMG PONIES!!

Windows must take a week to boot up. :p
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2 minutes and around 45 secs usually.
Easely much faster if I order it not to start msn, xfire, last.fm, deamontools, phone manager, razer software, etcetc on startup.

I have made a simple bat to close down a lot of apps and it closes down 30 of my 55 processes, but I don't use it any more due to having a fast enough pc now, I used to use it for bf2 when I had just 1gb of RAM.
 
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On my fileserver - same install of xp pro since i first built it on a celeron 900 with 120gb of space (now a p35, quad core xeon and 4tb hdd space). It's been though about 5-6 systems.

Desktop gets flushed with a new x64 vista install every time i change the mainboard (now 3 times)
Installed vista x64 on my laptops when I got them and have not reinstalled since then.

Since I moved to vista on my machines I haven't felt a slowdown or need to reinstall unlike when I used xp which I did every 3-6 months.
On my server I have a lot of settings and files which would be a pain to backup and then restore on a new install so I don't bother.
 
Every 6ish months or so depending on how messed up I've made my system. I tend to do a lot of mucking around, often without knowing exactly what I'm doing, but hey, that's how you learn.
 
Currently weighing it up as I've noticed startup is slow as anything - not really a problem as I leave my PC on 24/7 :)

I probably would have reinstalled by now, about once a year is fine for me, but I've got everything on one partition and it's all setup how I want it now :(
 
Antar Bolaeisk said:
Every 6ish months or so depending on how messed up I've made my system. I tend to do a lot of mucking around, often without knowing exactly what I'm doing, but hey, that's how you learn.
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aye, same here really

when things get a little slow even after a good clean up, or when I just want a fresh canvas again. Alhough I still find I have a lot less OS issues since going vista - much against what a lot of people say - it seems to deal withthe crap I put it through better then XP ever did.
 
snowdog said:
Oh I forgot to say my reason:

I cba to reinstall all this, besides that pic is from a year ago, now I have even much more:



Prolly one more full page of apps by now.
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christ on a bike!!!

I do mine whenever I break something and get forced into it, I sometimes find a reason to when I do a chipset change too.

Recent reasons are because my xp/vista dual boot means I couldn't recover the XP disk space when I decided to ditch xp, moving to vista 64.

Thought I was going to have to do it this week when I upgraded my secondary disk only to find it had the partition table on it and I couldn't boot without it but I managed to fix it.

To be honest I keep the OS size down, uninstall things I know I'm not going to use again (like Crysis lol!), keep on top of the spyware/virus protection and stay in control of my startup items. Its pretty clean.

Sooner or later I'll get spooked by something that comes along with a download or I'll install something and knacker it though :)
 
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