How often do you reinstall Windows?

Good grief, no, I reinstall it about never.
I think the last time I did it was because I was changing my C drive, and it refused to clone correctly. I have completely changed the hardware before now and still not re-installed it. It's just too much work.
 
Never now. Its very stable, I remember back when XP / Win 3.11 I was regularly changing and installing the OS.
I can remember reinstalling 98 and XP every 6 months or so and it wasn't a chore to setup like Windows 10+ is now. I spend more time turning pointless stuff off in Settings than I do installing the actual OS.
 
On my second install of 10 this year, no idea who when why or what, but something isn't mashing up, windows or bloody amd , who knows.

Second might be just have to be 11.
 
Yes, I find that Steam is great for that.
I have always had windows on C: and data on D: and have done this since.... Well, Ever since I had my first Hard Disk I recon. Even before I used a PC for anything serious.

Now all my PCs have at least 2 Drives, an SSD for C: and a HD for D: but my main PC also has E: for Media and F: for junk
 
Hopefully you don't keep your Steam library on the HDD, most games now recommend an SSD as they leverage at the very least, the SATA bandwidth of an SSD for fast loading of streaming assets during gameplay.
 
Hopefully you don't keep your Steam library on the HDD, most games now recommend an SSD as they leverage at the very least, the SATA bandwidth of an SSD for fast loading of streaming assets during gameplay.

Yeah, but while I have half a billion games on the steam account, I kind of only really play a few, because I have a wrecked hand, and so FPS games have gone off the list ( Devastated - No more COD, UT, Doom, HalfLife etc ) and most newer games are kind of just the same as older games, just better looking, and so they dont really appeal to me all that much.

I suppose this is why I stopped buying high end GFX cards... The cards I have, are already vastly overpowered for the games I do play.

But you are right, many newer games do have a huge draw of data, and do benefit from being on an SSD, and with them coming down in price for the bigger ones, it makes sense, but thats not necessary for me.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mrk
Kind of a holy thread revival batman, but I didn't see the need to create a new thread.

I remember back in XP days it could easily be every month Windows needed re installing and had consistent BSODS, Windows Vista no better, 7 was improving, onto the newer Windows and it didn't seem an issue?

Had my installation of Windows 11 since May last year and see no need to re-install, doesn't seem any slower, conscious of all the build up of files in the background though, but wonder what's changed to make re-installing a think of the past in some ways?
Never had an issue with XP '98 on the other hand, hell on earth 2000 was ok too now I think about it.

Windows never gets installed unless its a major OS change i.e. 7 to 10 and 10 to 11 whenever that happens. Or unless something majorly breaks I've had this install across 4 cpu's and a similar number of gpu's and two motherboards, only the latter seems to trigger a reactivation request from Windows

...and speak of the devil windows managed to break badly turns out forcing a reboot when windows is stuck trying to access a corrupt disk causes major corruption to itself so cue three days of faffing about with backing up software, reinstalling windows and tweaking before I'm happy with it. Steam simply worked out of teh box copied the entire backup back to main drive fired it up and dang off it went. Colour me impressed.
 
Last edited:
For those that do reinstall Windows, think twice about encryption...


I've never used it, and never will as it's not necessary.

k80DEs3.png
 
Kind of a holy thread revival batman, but I didn't see the need to create a new thread.

I remember back in XP days it could easily be every month Windows needed re installing and had consistent BSODS, Windows Vista no better, 7 was improving, onto the newer Windows and it didn't seem an issue?

Had my installation of Windows 11 since May last year and see no need to re-install, doesn't seem any slower, conscious of all the build up of files in the background though, but wonder what's changed to make re-installing a think of the past in some ways?

I would bet moving to SSD/NVMe has had huge empirical benefits of not slowing down as you fill it with stuff. Mechanical drives suffered badly from this, so a frequent re-install was almost essential to avoid it slowing down.
 
Does reinstalling in a VM count? :)

If it does then about 10+ times a day while I'm testing how to remove Edge and the *new Windows back up app from my install image.

*That they just decide to foist on everyone without asking and is totally useless if you don't have/want a MS account.
 
Does reinstalling in a VM count? :)

If it does then about 10+ times a day while I'm testing how to remove Edge and the *new Windows back up app from my install image.

*That they just decide to foist on everyone without asking and is totally useless if you don't have/want a MS account.

Why remove it though it doesn't affect anything being there and uninstalling only free's up a tiny amount of space? I know some are mad about removing everything they dont use but really, no need!
 
Why remove it though it doesn't affect anything being there and uninstalling only free's up a tiny amount of space? I know some are mad about removing everything they dont use but really, no need!
Because it's a personal computer and i don't want +1.2GB of software that I'm never going to use just because Microsoft thinks they know better than i do what should be installed on my hardware, that and it's a security risk.
Microsoft may think it's a good idea to install/enable unnecessary software and increase attack vectors but i don't and as it's my computer, not Microsoft's, i get to decide what is an isn't installed.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom