How often do you reinstall Windows?

[Jason McBurney]

:omg: Use Virtuals Machines for questionable products! Throw hardware at the problem :)

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature. - Dave Barry

[Rocky Moore]

Typically once per year, but that has slipped some of the last few years as it takes way to long to reinstall and configure all the apps. It can take me weeks before I have a system back up and running with everything. Most of the time now, I just buy another HD and HD tray and install to a fresh drive leaving my old install untouched, then if I forget something I can just slide the old drive in and be right back in the old install. Sure wish we could go backwards to the style of Windows 3.1. Most of the time you could blow out the OS, reinstall the OS, copy the folders you had your programs in and then create shortcuts to the exe or com files (I even made a simple program back then that searched your drive and created all the shortcuts (added to Program Manager).

Rocky <>< Latest Code Blog Post: Vista for Web Development, Read this first! Latest Tech Blog Post: USA City Burnt To Death...

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

Once every 2-3 years or so.

-- Painstakingly Drawn Before a Live Audience

[Andre xxxxxxx]

I've bought the PC 8 years ago, was a dual P2 400 MHz with 512 MB RAM and a Riva TNT2 Ultra (32 MB :-D). I've killed the memory and CPUs when I've pressed a wire of the CPU fan into a memory socket and turned the PC on. Haven't seen that the wire was under the memory when I pressed it into the socket :( I've replaced the P2s with P3s with 800 MHz and now 768 MB RAM (actually 1 GB, but the board doesn't support it). The Riva TNT2 was too slow to play C&C Generals so I've replaced them with a GeForce FX5200 (board does only support AGP x1 :-D) and it runs fine. Actually I can still do everything with this PC*, but I'll replace it with a Quad Opteron next weekend. * I can even run Vista in VMWare :laugh:

[Lost User]

Andre Buenger wrote:

I've bought the PC 8 years ago, was a dual P2 400 MHz with 512 MB RAM and a Riva TNT2 Ultra (32 MB ). I've killed the memory and CPUs when I've pressed a wire of the CPU fan into a memory socket and turned the PC on. Haven't seen that the wire was under the memory when I pressed it into the socket I've replaced the P2s with P3s with 800 MHz and now 768 MB RAM (actually 1 GB, but the board doesn't support it). The Riva TNT2 was too slow to play C&C Generals so I've replaced them with a GeForce FX5200 (board does only support AGP x1 ) and it runs fine. Actually I can still do everything with this PC, but I'll replace it with a Quad Opteron next weekend.

I bet that cost a fortune! Command & Conquer has always been my favorite game, I have the original DOS version and I have Generals Zero Hour. Company of Heroes is pretty good too, but C&C is still my favorite.

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[_alank]

I don't well maybe that isn't accurate. I make a ghost image of my base install and update it periodically. It is nice to go back to a square one installation after you screwed it up doing whatever too it... With ghost I am back to about 95% functional in 15 minutes. I keep trying to get it closer to 100% but there is always something left undone or unaccounted for with the image...

[RoswellNX]

i don't reinstall it per se, but i do have 8 to 10 hard drives hanging around (for the 3 to 5 computers), each with its own installation of windows and horde of files. Most of them go out of service because of bad sectors and mechanical problems since they are already at half-life when i install them. I'm looking to probably buy a few new drives and back these up so i can make sure my stuff is safe and turn the platters of the old ones into windchimes. I still mostly run Win98, though i do have XP on several machines....surprised? but look at my hardware...i mostly salvage, so by the time i get my hands on a computer it's a couple years old. I'd rather have Win2K on most, but i don't have a copy, so i'm perfectly fine with what i have running... Roswell

"Angelinos -- excuse me. There will be civility today."
Antonio VillaRaigosa
City Mayor, Los Angeles, CA

[David Wulff]

I'm with you on this one. It just takes so long to get the system back how I like it that I would rather live with the cobwebs than have to wallpaper all over again.

---

Ðavid Wulff What kind of music to programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

[Lost User]

At work it's rare - I ran NT4 for nearly 6 years on the original install. Been running the original XP install ever since. At home it's fairly often - once per year at a minimum on my main box. I have a secondary machine that gets various flavors of Linux thrown at it every couple months. I've got Ubuntu running on it now and it might just stay a while. ;)

"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." - Stephen Hawking

[_alank]

Nice list I do all server/distributed process development under virtualization. However inevitably or eventually I will screw up the host for one reason or the other. So good old imaging to the rescue for the host. Reconfiguring the previous image can take a few hours but only if I have a few difficult additions. I install Office and two versions of Visual Studio on a different drive to save space on the image file and speed up the re-imaging process.

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

Also, if you take care of the operating system, it doesn't slow down that much. Defragging, registry clean up, app uninstallation, etc, does wonder. In fact, the current install I have is about 2 years old. It runs very well :)

-- Fun for the whole family - except grandma and grandpa

[David Wulff]

I can't understand people who have hundreds of applications installed. There is no way they can use them all. Every time I go to install something new the first thing I do is browse through my installed software list and see what hasn't been used and can be removed. I figure it is like hoovering the inside of your car to clear out all the fast food wrappers and fuel receipts. If you let it build up to much you won't be able to see out of the windows. I work with one guy who had four columns of folders on his start menu before cleaning them up to three and a half. I just couldn't live like that. Heck, more than two windows on my task bar per monitor is too many. :~ I must admit I haven't defragged since Windows 2000. My machine has never clogged enough to warrant it.

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Ðavid Wulff What kind of music to programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

[Andre xxxxxxx]

Captain See SharpI bet that cost a fortune!

The quad Opteron? Actually not, I got all four Opteron 852 (Single core, 2.6 GHz) for only USD 650 on eBay (list price ~ USD 1000 each) and 4 GB ECC REG memory for only USD 260, also on eBay :) Only the Tyan K8QE is a little bit pricey with USD 1000, but it supports up to 8 dual core CPUs, so there is a lot of room for expansion in the future when the prices drops. I've also an unused Athlon 3000+ (1.8 GHz) machine here, made some performance tests and decided to stay with the dual P3 800 MHz. Only one single core sucks, the Athlon wasn't any faster and it wasn't worth all the time to set up the PC. I guess it will take 3 days just to reinstall all the software.

[Shog9 0]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

registry clean up

I've been meaning to ask about that; i've seen registry cleanup utils mentioned a few times here in The Lounge - are there any that aren't crap? Admittedly, the last time i used such a thing was back in the days of Win95, a time when i thought nothing of booting into DOS, dumping the whole registry to a text file, editing the bits i wanted to change, and then restoring it. Back then, "Registry cleaner" was pretty much synonymous with "pointless voodoo sold to gullible relatives". Of course, i had the same opinion of virus scanners then too...

---- I just want you to be happy; That's my only little wish...

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

David Wulff wrote:

I figure it is like hoovering the inside of your car to clear out all the fast food wrappers and fuel receipts.

Or.. emptying the full garbage can before you start filling it up again.

David Wulff wrote:

I work with one guy who had four columns of folders on his start menu before cleaning them up to three and a half.

At home I've got three columns. :~ On the other hand, I use a lot of the stuff I've got in there. Scratch that. I just had a look through the start menu, and I've got crap apps sitting in the start menu which I haven't used in quite a while, nor do I intend to use them. Cleaning time again! At work, I moved a lot of stuff into the subfolders Misc, Development, and Seldomly Used Stuff. I'm more "nazi" about tidiness at work than at home.

David Wulff wrote:

I must admit I haven't defragged since Windows 2000. My machine has never clogged enough to warrant it.

I suppose it depends a lot on how much you've filled your drives. I bought an additional 300 gig some time ago, and I haven't had the need to defrag yet...

-- For External Use Only

[MatrixCoder]

I reinstall every 6-12 months. Keeps everything running smooth so my computer doesn't get too cluttered.

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Trinity: Neo... nobody has ever done this before. Neo: That's why it's going to work.

[David Wulff]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

At home I've got three columns. :~

Try organising your folders one level down into categories, i.e.: Internet, Utilities, Development, etc. It messes up currently installs apps when you come to uninstall them, but you can choose the correct location for new apps, and it is well worth the small inconvienience. I do that on Windows XP, and manage to keep my initial start menu list to about ten items. With Vista the new start menu search feature makes it unecessary because you'll never open your programs menu again!

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Ðavid Wulff What kind of music to programmers listen to?
Join the Code Project Last.fm group | dwulff
I'm so gangsta I eat cereal without the milk

[Jorgen Sigvardsson]

The last time I cleaned up the registry, I wrote an app for it. I had thousands of dangling COM and file extension registrations. I also went through HKLM/HKCU\Software\* to clean out crap that apps had left behind. The COM-registrations was primarily my own fault, as I had been working on HUGE type libraries. I wouldn't dare let someone else's registry cleaning app do it's black voodoo on my hives, unless I get a preview of suggested actions...

-- Smell-o-vision users, insert nostril tubes now

[Lost User]

Joergen Sigvardsson wrote:

I also went through HKLM/HKCU\Software\* to clean out crap that apps had left behind.

...and that sir, is my biggest complaint about applications and the Windows OSes in general. Oh! If this was the Soapbox I'd be offending kid sisters like it's going out of style. :mad:

"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image." - Stephen Hawking

[Shog9 0]

David Wulff wrote:

I work with one guy who had four columns of folders on his start menu before cleaning them up to three and a half.

Up 'till a couple of weeks ago, this machine would have given that guy a run for his money. And probably beat him on depth, since i do tend to organize my Start menu into a nice deep hierarchy. I install a lot of crap, but most of what stays installed is used. Maybe not every day, but once a month is still often enough that i'll keep it installed. Of course, the programs i use the most tend to be the ones that i don't have to install. There are 17 .exes in my \tools folder right now, with 31 more in the sysinternals subfolder (of which i use about 10), and a handful more in other subfolders (the ones that need config files or DLLs have to stay in their own little space). This folder gets copied around to other computers i use, and shared on the WAN for when i'm using computers i don't normally use. And of course, it's on the system path, so i need only type the name of a command to use it. I wish dearly that all the software i use could be managed so easily.

David Wulff wrote:

Heck, more than two windows on my task bar per monitor is too many.

I just rebooted both machines in front of me a few hours ago, and (since this is officially the last day i work this year) haven't been doing much since. And i just finished configuring a remote build server, and so closed the windows open for that task. There are seven windows shown on one task bar, eight on the other: two email, two browsers, one text editor, two SourceOffSite windows, four Explorer windows (two open to SVN-controlled locations, for that purpose), MS SQL Server Management Studio Express (open for a task i'm just about to start), two Visual Studio 2005 windows (related task, the refactoring of a database schema and associated re-writing of dependent code), a little utility program that displays a running log of events happening elsewhere that i'm mildly interested in (and extremely interested in knowing if they ever stop), and a command prompt (that will be closed at the completion of the pending task). At ten o'clock this morning, there would easily have been three times as many windows open. Most of them in use. And i was baking scones. ... You know, i think i may have just figured out why i've been so scatter-brained lately. :-O