How Often Do You Reformat?


How often do you reformat your computer?  

401 members have voted

  1. 1. How often do you reformat your computer?

    • Every Few Weeks
      14
    • Every Month
      27
    • Every 2-6 Months
      80
    • Every 6-10 Months
      70
    • Every Year
      33
    • Every Few Years
      30
    • Whenever it needs it
      119
    • Reformat? Ha! (What's a reformat?)
      28


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Probably every 6 months to a year. or If I ever do a major upgrade, just to start fresh.

I actually find that a bit of use and tweaking, the performance actually increases over time.

Zero, I'd say that every 2 days would have actually been having a negative effect on performance. :/

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It varies but usually fortnightly, sometimes weekly. Im a huge speed/neat freak so my windows has to be perfect, so im forever formatting.

585503815[/snapback]

Exactly the same as me, lol (Y)

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When I cant fix whatever happened....LOL....I'm a tech so I test alot of new software and or hardware...so if something i do or put in doesnt work the only thing to do is FRESH FORMAT...use it as a last resort though because all the software I have on my systems can take days to put back on...I reccomend using a backup program and/or image iso...I seen another tech on here that had 3 days to restore 50-100 computers for the business he worked for...If he's here and you got all the systems back up and running make an image of the server that way in case you have to do it again all the systems can run off the image from the server...

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Whenever something happens to my comp that I can't fix! :laugh:

Occasionally I install something that totally screws up my comp, but I've learned better by now! :happy:

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Format should be the last resort, sure I have said this before.

If I didn't have to phone up M$ activation line then maybe I would, I have a real pain in the backside problem with NIS2005 at the moment, which makes me want to format, but apart from that my system is at it's peak and i can't be bothered.

Edited by leesmithg
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I used to have to format about every 3 months, when something got screwed with Windows. Now I've managed to go since September without having to rebuild, new record :blink:

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I used to do it every six months, but I havent done one in probably a year and a half. My baby has been rock solid. Although i'm gonna do a reformat when this semester ends, so i can start from scratch and make a ghost image.

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I used to do it every six months, but I havent done one in probably a year and a half. My baby has been rock solid. Although i'm gonna do a reformat when this semester ends, so i can start from scratch and make a ghost image.

585509695[/snapback]

That was my problem also 'ghost image'. I had restored an image, forgot to turn the schedule off, didn't realise, installed an application called 'secure it' then noticed NIS2005 had these errors:

nisplug.dll/10036

nisplug.dll/10085

nisplug.dll/10074

nisplug.dll/10090

So I thought when the first error came, I would restore an image, but arggghhhh it had created one when I was away from PC after install of 'secure it'.

You're right best thing to do is install everything you use on a day-to-day basis make sure it's working fine, create image and then try some shareware, freeware, open source and if it goes pear shaped, delete drive and restore image.

I might think about it after Easter if I can't get symantec to help me fix the problem.

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Every Now and Then , I have an Old PC with Windows XP , Bought it when it was new on 2002-2003, I really need to buy a new one. :ninja:

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I used to format about once every week or two. Now it's about once every 3 or 4 months or whenever my system gets to a point where it's just easier to format rather than clean all the stray reg entries and junk progs/files that I don't need anymore.

I'm about due right now actually. I don't feel like it though. lol

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Well, I format about ever 1 - 2 months. This one time when I tried to fix two computers at the same time I formatted about 5 times in one night. Another time a virus infected through network and had to format all three of my desktop computers. Sucks big time to pinpoint that one file.

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As little as reasonably possible. It's such a pain to reconfigure & reinstall everything (how can some of you do it every couple weeks??)

I guess if you only use your computer for web & mail it wouldn't be such an issue...

It generally ends up being about once a year. Though, the last time I did it (Jan 1 of this year) it was because i was migrating to my new computer... I probably wouldn't have done it otherwise.

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I voted every year because that's about when the latest Mac OS comes out. Upgrades never seem to work too well on any system that I've been on, Mac or PC, so I just save what i need and start fresh on the Mac. The PC... well, it just needs to be done every so often. :)

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