How oftern do you...

I’d do that every about 6-8 months but that depends of how my system performs.
Sometimes when things go wrong (trying new drivers, application, settings) I can reinstall few times in same day :eek:
 
whenever i start to notice the performance of windows degrade significantly...

usually about every 12-18months...
 
Never if I can help it. If i reinstall windows, which I avoid doing and shouldn't really need to unless a fix is not possible (very rare), then I will keep file system and over write the old install. This keeps my files and programs as I only backup the most important stuff. It works for me and I have files from over 9 years ago on my drives.
 
I reinstall my OS (and format) every week or two. The thing is I don't really know why. Think it's some form of obsessive compulsive disorder :)

Little things start to bug me or something seems a tad slower than before and rather than try to work out why, I just re-image back to a clean OS. Only takes a couple of minutes using Acronis.

Keep my games and saved stuff on separate drives and most games don't actually need reinstalling from scratch these days.

Never use a virus scanner or defrag.
 
I don't bother. If I have problems I fix them and with regular maintence of the registry and not installing crap, my PC's performance doesn't degrade significantly.

zytok said:
I reinstall my OS (and format) every week or two. The thing is I don't really know why. Think it's some form of obsessive compulsive disorder :)
Click to expand...

:eek:

Burnsy
 
I let my installations go for as long as possible, I have one that has been installed for 18 months (and still runs well), and another that has been running 9 months....I find that simple maintenance, ie 3-4 weekly defrag, running CCleaner keeps them in a decent state. :)
 
Before December last year my WinXP installation was around 18 months old.
In December I moved totally to Vista and that installation is the one I'm running now.
Unless my computer really gets in a complete and utter mess - I'd say 12-18 month reformats at the very most.
 
I format every time i do a full upgrade, about every 18 months - 2 yearsish. To much hassle to do it more often than that, unless theres a serious problem with the PC of course.
 
jbloggs said:
I have one that has been installed for 18 months (and still runs well), and another that has been running 9 months....
Click to expand...

My main workstation hasn't needed a reinstall for 3 years and it still running rather nippy.

Burnsy
 
zytok said:
I reinstall my OS (and format) every week or two. The thing is I don't really know why. Think it's some form of obsessive compulsive disorder :)

Little things start to bug me or something seems a tad slower than before and rather than try to work out why, I just re-image back to a clean OS. Only takes a couple of minutes using Acronis.

Keep my games and saved stuff on separate drives and most games don't actually need reinstalling from scratch these days.

Never use a virus scanner or defrag.
Click to expand...

That actually makes sense in a way. The system drive is barebone Windows, so I guess you lose nothing other than temporary files per re-image. However, you would get the same effect by just doing a disk clean-up and a defrag. Fresh Windows installations do not degrade within 2 weeks. Even my old XP machine which was on its original installation up until 6 months ago, worked fairly well surviving on regular maintenance.
 
My last PC I had for 18 months on the original XP install before I got rid of it. Before that my Athlon XP machine ran for 3 years off the original install.

And now my Macs have fun for 18+ months without so much as a thought about OS maintenance.

No idea why some people feel the need to format every 6 months, and weekly is just excessive.
 
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