Do you format and install Windows every x time?

[Salty Wagyu]

Never had a screw up with Windows 7 at all, only formatted and reinstalled 3 times, mainly for new SSD/PC.

[papercut2008uk]

the last time i did a re install of windows was back in 2010, (cmd type systeminfo) 

 

for Windows Vista and although it's starting to get slow on boot times (6 minutes +) i'm holding off re installing yet. 

[max22]

There's a better solution - Rollback RX:

 

 

 

That software is expensive and sucks. I tried it before.

[wahoospa]

I never do a format and reinstall just to be doing it for no reason. Only if it is a necessity to be done and I let Windows do the quick format since the long format takes so much time checking the disk. MS suggests doing the short format if you know the hard drive is good.

[neohelp]

I have to do it sooner or later; Big bug in my Windows install that I cannot figure out.

[Tomoko]

Hello

I was wondering do you format and install Windows (what edition) every x time?

Personally I use to do it when school starts and ended every year (Both my desktop and laptop). Now, its about that time (10/22/2012, 10:04:02 PM was when I installed) and was just thinking about what the rest do.

 

Back in the days of Windows 9x yes, but it's not necessary anymore. I haven't reinstalled Windows in years. It's just a big waste of your time.

[jamieakers]

Back in the days of Windows 9x yes, but it's not necessary anymore. I haven't reinstalled Windows in years. It's just a big waste of your time.

 

This.  There's no real need to do it since Windows 2000.  Hell I clobber my machines all day every day and don't bother with defrag, scandisk or anything and they're as zippy as the day I bought them (bar the apps I've installed myself)

[DrainTheSw4mp]

Almost never. I'm actually waiting for the 8.1 RTM to do a clean install though, as updating from W7 to W8 made my computer a bit messy.

[thomastmc]

I'd say that's a good practice for a number of reasons. I understand some may not, but it's usually out of complacency rather than whether or not there is a real benefit in doing it.

 

I don't care what anyone says, even Windows 8 get's bogged down over time with broken and rarely used registry entries, temp files on the disk that are never deleted, and clutter from apps that were installed and uninstalled. Most of that can't be removed by the system, or by one of the many hacky system cleaning apps, because neither can tell whether they're truly needed or not so they leave them just incase.

 

The master file table (MFT) and USN of the system disk gets cluttered, and they become fragmented.

 

The registry becomes fragmented, the page file becomes fragmented, and boot files become fragmented. Any file that is in use in Windows at the time the defragmenter is run won't be defragged.

 

If you've gotten a virus that you don't know about, (which the best viruses are always the ones that weren't detected and never alert you to their presence), it will be removed.

 

Also, it's a good time to take stock of what apps you use and don't use, and leads to leaner system over time. It's also a good time to update your apps.

 

I usually format the system disk and reinstall at least once a year on my PCs. (A clean install usually isn't the case. It's usually a restored backup that's already configured, has my "core apps" installed, and has about 1-2 days of use on it). For a new version of Windows, or even former service packs, I always format and do a clean install.

 

Then, I keep Acronis TrueImage backups of the system incase I need to quickly restore it in the interim. Even with Office, Visual Studio, Adobe CS, etc., it only takes like 15-20 minutes to restore a full system of 60 GB.

[Dick Montage]

The registry becomes fragmented.

 

This keeps going around and around doesn't it...

[thomastmc]

This keeps going around and around doesn't it...

 

What do you mean?

[Dick Montage]

People keep bringing it up, and yet the same counter arguments of "no it doesn't" come up.  If you take care of your computer - don't frivoulously install every piece of software you see, do bad uninstalls - the registry is fine enough.

[thomastmc]

People keep bringing it up, and yet the same counter arguments of "no it doesn't" come up.  If you take care of your computer - don't frivoulously install every piece of software you see, do bad uninstalls - the registry is fine enough.

 

It's true that having a clean registry versus a modestly used registry doesn't help tremendously with running speed because the registry is directly accessed from memory, but booting is faster, and less memory is used. Over time though, even without bad practices, the registry begins to get bloated and physically fragmented.

 

So much is written and deleted from the registry by the system alone under normal operation. Like other binary database formats, it will have portions that exist even if they're no longer used. The registry will grow in size even if you're not installing and uninstalling a lot of apps.

 

Also, even though most or all of the registry is loaded in memory at boot, when the hives are written to disk they get fragmented just like a normal file. The system still has to allocate new disk space to store a larger hive, so it becomes physically fragmented as well.

[The Dark Knight]

I used to back in the day when using Windows 98 and XP. But with Windows 7 and 8 it is not at all required. Windows XP also holds up well if you don't load it up with crud. :)

[UseLess]

I find it very much depends on how you "treat" windows. If you regularly install and remove programs, swap hardware, etc then windows can become unstable after awhile (generally a few years I have found). I have been treating this install of windows well - 90% of software is copy-paste, not installed, no driver swapping, stable hardware, and i VM all my development (I find for some reason visual studio, python, the JDK, etc all unbalance a system - my experience, no hard facts). So far I have been running this install since early 2010 and it's been rock solid. The only reason I haven't upgraded to W8 is simply because this install is AMAZINGLY stable. I literally cannot remember the last time I have had it crash, and I don't think I have ever had a BSOD.

[Coagulated]

I used to do it once or twice a year until I got my SSD.  Now, I've only done it once since I got the SSD and that was because I managed to partition and make a Windows 7 Bootdisk out of my SSD instead of the USB stick I had plugged in.  I was using CMD Prompt and I messed something up, went back to the start of the process, but got distracted by something on my phone, went back to it and selected the wrong drive :|

[neohelp]

I used to do it once or twice a year until I got my SSD.  Now, I've only done it once since I got the SSD and that was because I managed to partition and make a Windows 7 Bootdisk out of my SSD instead of the USB stick I had plugged in.  I was using CMD Prompt and I messed something up, went back to the start of the process, but got distracted by something on my phone, went back to it and selected the wrong drive :|

Completely nonrelated to the topic but the http://plixi.com/p/93854701 link does not work...

[Knife Party]

I used to do it once or twice a year until I got my SSD.  Now, I've only done it once since I got the SSD and that was because I managed to partition and make a Windows 7 Bootdisk out of my SSD instead of the USB stick I had plugged in.  I was using CMD Prompt and I messed something up, went back to the start of the process, but got distracted by something on my phone, went back to it and selected the wrong drive :|

:( I know what you mean. I had a similar incident a while back. My friends were in the room next door watching something on youtube, drinking and being loud, I already had a few drinks. next thing I knew I jerked into a scream of "NOO", I had just accidently FUBARED a linux install on my music/media drive. Face to the palm.  :pinch:  :cry:  Keep strong brother!  :blush:

[Nagisan]

I feel like I caused this thread with my inquiries about Windows 8 yesterday.

 

At any rate, I used to reinstall every 6 months, even with Windows 7. My last install lasted 13 months before yesterday when I finally decided to install Windows 8 (for the record, I run ClassicShell so it goes straight to the desktop). So far I'm really liking it, it was easy transferring all my main things back, my games (90% of them through steam) get installed on secondary HDDs and my browser profiles are also located on secondary drives, so it was a matter of just re-pointing my browser profiles and adding the steam library on my secondary HDD to a fresh steam install and it picked up and 37% of my installed software was back, Ninite took care of another 25% of my installed software. The rest I haven't decided if I'm going to reinstall it or not.

 

Also planning on making a disk image, not sure if I'll decide to reinstall before something changes that invalidates the image but we'll see.

[Sadelwo]

Until Vista reinstalling roughly every 10 months to a year would keep windows up to speed. Since Windows 7 however, the only time I've reinstalled was when a HDD died. Windows 6.x OSes have matured greatly from a stability standpoint so that once you're not the type to randomly click stuff online or install every bundled toolbar, your Windows install could last as long as the disk you installed it on.

[SirEvan]

Depends.  Sometimes if, like other have said, it runs slow, or I've exhausted all other options, I'll do it.  Since windows 8, and to some extent, Win 7, the Os is pretty good about managing itself and not trashing files like it used to back in vista/xp/95/98.  Onnnnce in a while I'll have some strange problem where an app doesn't fully remove itself and ends up screwing something up, but since re-installing is a pain, I usually wait until a new release comes out.

 

For my server, it's a different story.  When I upgrade OS's, I pull the physical drive and replace it with a new one, that way if anything goes wrong I put the old drive back in and I'm back where i left off.

[+therealDamien Subscriber¹]

reinstalling is a pain. for me it take 3-5 hours. between installing updates and programs. and then finding out I forgot to install something. and then half the day is gone:( 

 

so normally I just make a image of the system and then restore from it if something happens.

 

but sometimes, I would do a clean install, because a bug or something in the backup image decided to show its ugly face and cause me problems.

 

 

 

vista is the worst pain the world, because of the time required to install the service packs....rebooting,rebooting,rebooting...

[Ambroos]

After every semester. I'm studying software development and always manage to load a huge amount of unnecessary tools on my PC. After each semester (when I passed my exams) I start over clean again :)

 

Next up is end of August, before leaving to study in Cardiff for a semester.

[theyarecomingforyou]

I reinstall Windows whenever performance starts to trail off, when I get new hardware or when a new release comes around - that's typically every 9-12 months. People might find that excessive but I find the process quite rewarding, as there's nothing like a completely clean system. Theoretically the new functionality in Windows 8 precludes the need for a full format but I don't trust it, as I've come across a few issues (once it became corrupted and required the Windows install media). I used to rely on system images that included my standard applications / drivers but Microsoft has removed that functionality with Windows 8.1.  :angry:

[daniel_rh]

Since Windows 7 I haven't had the need to reinstall Windows as often as before... So I would say every year or every two years, mostly because of hardware upgrades and huge Windows updates