How often do you re-install?

GIBURROWS

GIBURROWS

GIBURROWS

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I have a 60GB SSD as my boot disk and it has been a year and is nearly full so should I re-install windows to clear some of the rubbish on there and how often should I be doing this if at all?
 
It has got to the point where there are files which have names I do not recognize so I don't know if I need them for other programs to work or not.
 
I spent about the first 6 months of this year reinstalling every 30 days. Not because I needed to, but because:

  • I couldn't be bothered to call MS and do a licence reset
  • I was waiting on some new kit
  • I didn't have anything better to do as I'd just quit my job ;)

In a normal year, I'd probably reinstall 2 or 3 times though. I like it when everything's new and fast and the registry hasn't got filled up with crap software I've been playing with.
 
when hardware significantly changes you should reinstall (or at least I've got in the habit of doing so).

I don't reinstall from CD/USB tho. I have an image of win7+apps that I used imagex to create. re-imaging takes all of 3 minutes, then you reboot and you're back up and running.
 
Dano said:
I've never re-installed W7.
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This. I'll only reinstall if I somehow mess up the install to the point of unable to fix it, or do a massive hardware change.

7 seems fine even after a year and half, still as fast as it was on the first day.
 
Have you disabled hibernation and shrank the pagefile size? They take a good chunk of the SSD. I still have 27gb free space on my 64gb SSD.
 
Typically when I get new hardware. I never install anything though, so my install doesn't really get 'trashed'

Most programs are a lot cleaner than they used to be, back in the 98 and XP days, you'd get all sorts of crap causing problems
 
GIBURROWS said:
So do you just write down the programs you will need to download again before you re-install or...
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I know what software I use. A lot of my 'regular use' applications are sat on a separate drive, so all I need to do is pin the exe to the taskbar when I reinstall and I'm good to go.

Those that I do need to reinstall are on my NAS anyway. I very rarely have to download the applicaions I use, unless there's an update / new driver.

Dano said:
Stop running windows98.
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Haven't even seen a running Windows 98 install since XP came out in 2001 :p

I happen to like doing a fresh install now and again, and as another poster mentioned he does, I also make a system image so if I do reinstall it only takes minutes to get back up and running.

If I change a major hardware component, I'll also do a fresh install.

dr_chanMaster said:
Serial re-installers have OCD, and their virginity safely intact.
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You keep telling yourself that. Maybe one day you'll find one person that that's actually true for ;)
 
I've only ever reinstalled when I've changed hardware. on XP I always had a backed up Ghost image of my OS drive, on W7 I've only ever reinstalled when I've done a big hardware change, like mobo.

Next time will be Windows 8, although I might wait until W8 SP1 ;)
 
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