How often do you format your Windows box?

[BRiT]

Probably true but it comes down to if it takes more time to take care of it or to spend some time to make a full reinstall.

Setting up a Scheduled disk defrag is a one-time 15 minutes task at most.

Cleaning up Registry via a Registry Cleaner type of program is ~ 2 minutes a month.
Cleaning out Win TMP directory is ~ 0.5 minute a month.
Cleaning out Win Uninstall Dirs is ~ 0.5 minute a month.

How long is your typical reformat and redo a full install with reinstalling all of your software and tweaking all of your OS settings back to the way they were?

 

[Skrying]

Quick, very very quick if you keep an image of the install just after completion and at the basic setting chances you usually make.

 

[sham63]

Reformat? Until I had a harddrive crash with xp a couple of years ago I never reinstalled windows. When I went from 3.1, to 95, to 98, to xp I just bought the upgrade version and did an upgrade install. The easy way is the only way. :smile:

I went through so many mb and video upgrades without reinstalling I could never understand people that would always talk about how often they did reinstall. They seemed to think it was some kind of badge of honor or something.

Jim

 

[swaaye]

Changing motherboards and not reinstalling is usually a bad idea. The OS frequently won't even boot at all because it doesn't have the right drivers for the chipset installed. Although, yeah sometimes it can work out ok. Still not going to be a very clean install though.

 

[BlizzardOne]

Usually every 15-18 months, which usually coincides with a significant hardware change.

 

[Mummy]

Voted 6+ months, my XP install on the old PC is 2.5 years old.
On the Q6600 i obiviously had to reinstall 'cause it's a box i bought recently.

 

[Bludd]

I reinstall when something breaks.

 

[Bludd]

Changing motherboards and not reinstalling is usually a bad idea. The OS frequently won't even boot at all because it doesn't have the right drivers for the chipset installed. Although, yeah sometimes it can work out ok. Still not going to be a very clean install though.

Doing a repair install after changing motherboard should get the right drivers up and running.

But I am with you, I prefer a clean install when changing something as significant as the mobo.

 

[sham63]

Doing a repair install after changing motherboard should get the right drivers up and running.

But I am with you, I prefer a clean install when changing something as significant as the mobo.

The first time I swapped a mobo in xp I did a repair install. Then I learned about the ide trick and it was a lot easier after that. Of course in win 95 and 98 it was even easier, swap out and load new drivers, that's it. From my experience reinstalling windows regularly is not needed. Now if something like a harddrive crash or a virus infection happened that is something else.

Of course it could be an age thing. Back in the dos days I spent more time tinkering with hardware and getting it to run faster. Now I tend to slap it together and get it running and start using it.

Jim

 

[Gnerma]

Less and less every year. I used to knock out a format every 3 months or so, but as I've gotten older and Windows has gotten better at not choking on its own vomit, it's become a rarer event every year.

I've been running Vista for nearly a year now and so far it's been a nice improvement in this area when compared directly to XP. I've only done one major reformat and that was to fix a few nagging issues that could have been fixed given enough patience. I plan on reformatting again sometime in the first half of the year, mostly to move to 64 bit.

 

[Frank]

About once or twice a year, depending. With a PC and two laptops, that averages to about four or five times a year.

 

[AlNom]

Once per computer per year sounds about right for me. It's usually because of a major upgrade or something silly happened, so it's not a planned occurrence for me. It's a lot less than a few years back when I was doing all sorts of things to the computers at home though.

These days, I just don't do much on computers other than use office apps or web browsing - stuff that hardly necessitates a reformat.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I only format if something screws up, which is bound to happen eventually, but it takes longer than 6 months. I've actually been running stable for over a year now, which is the first time I've ever had that happen without a hd failure or something.

Edit: I also format whenever I do a major hardware upgrade, which hasn't happened for quite a while.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Only when I need to, so almost never. I have not reinstalled my htpc for over 2 years, I didnt format my last pc for over 1.5 year only when i bought a q6600 I had to do a reinstall ofcourse and also my parent/brothers pc worked more than over a year on one install untill I installed a new disk 2 weeks ago and had to reinstall.

Personally I hardly notice the pc's in my home getting slower over time. Booting usually gets slower over time because I tend to put to much stuff on the desktop and all but nothing that I can be to botherd about. Next time I do a format I should remember to make a image right after I installed everything I need. One of the reasons I hate formatting is because its takes a day before you got your system like you want it again if you do everything by hand.