How often do you format and then reinstall your OS to your computer?

[RodgerM]

Every time it's needed? 6 months ? 3 months ?

I seem to notice Windows 7 doesn't tear down to a crawl as fast as XP did.

[Zekiran]

Once.

You should never need to reformat your computer. If you properly keep it defragged, cleaned up manually and pay attention to your hardware and software usage, you shouldn't NEED to reformat - ever.

[monkeedude1212]

I haven't had to reformat my PC since Windows ME. *shudders*

[Kiarash]

I usually keep my music files and documents safe in a usb and if some thing bad happens I do a factory default on it. Otherwise, I just keep on using it.

[CTRL ALT DEL !]

When it doesn't do what it should do.

[chaplain_wu]

As often as I need to. Such as when I give away my laptop to someone.

[750]

When the Motherboard or HDD bricks it

[RodgerM]

Once.

You should never need to reformat your computer. If you properly keep it defragged, cleaned up manually and pay attention to your hardware and software usage, you shouldn't NEED to reformat - ever.

So the "new format" feel and speed is just a figment of imagination ever ?

[Franky123]

Zekiran is right, a normal operating machine and OS does NOT simply "tear down to a crawl" on its own. It's from lack of maintenance and orderly and responsible loading of software onto your pc. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Kitchensink]

I haven't formatted since I built this PC a few years back. But that's because I can go elbow-deep in the registry and fix ♥♥♥♥ myself. Not that I often have to, as I rarely install anything more than what I absolutely need plus games and some music.

[Zekiran]

So the "new format" feel and speed is just a figment of imagination ever ?

Yes. As Franky says: garbage in, garbage out. If you habitually abuse your downloads, never delete things, don't optimize, and basically treat your computer as though it's a garbage can, that's how it'll behave.

If you understand how they work, how they DON'T work, and WHY they do and don't, you'd understand that the very last resort is reformatting.

Reformatting is for when you've managed to get an unfixable virus, or have managed to delete and not be able to somehow restore functionality by screwing up the system files.

Anything else is just "learn to manage your resources better" and "learn how to tell what's actually on your computer's drives and where".

[monkeedude1212]

Registry cleaners like CCleaner are also handy. I usually run that once a month, have a scheduled defrag, and every once in a while I run a virus scan.

The machine still runs like the day I opened it.

[A Guy]

Only when necessary, such as when the OS fails, I get a new computer, or I change OS's.

I assume by "format your computer" you actually mean reinstall your OS. Otherwise, I format my hard drives all the time.

[Orko...]

Only when I'm changing the operating system.
My current XP install works as well as it did when I installed it in April of 2004.

[Plasmafrog]

I had to recently reformat a friend's laptop hardrive, just a single partition though. Apparently, he had a bad and unrecoverable boot sector.

[l4nd0fc0nfu510n]

I only reformat when something goes horrifically wrong (accidentally wipe a partition or something). I actually enjoy reformatting though. I like reinstalling stuff and making sure everything works.

[freeloader105]

I had my Windows 7 install running for 2 years straight (since early August 2009) without a format. I only did the reformat because a dual-boot setup, among other things, was creating certain problems within Windows 7's disk management servides. They were probably resolvable, but I elected to just start clean.

However, I really didn't experience much of a performance hit by keeping an install for so long.

[RodgerM]

Yes. As Franky says: garbage in, garbage out. If you habitually abuse your downloads, never delete things, don't optimize, and basically treat your computer as though it's a garbage can, that's how it'll behave.

If you understand how they work, how they DON'T work, and WHY they do and don't, you'd understand that the very last resort is reformatting.

Reformatting is for when you've managed to get an unfixable virus, or have managed to delete and not be able to somehow restore functionality by screwing up the system files.

Anything else is just "learn to manage your resources better" and "learn how to tell what's actually on your computer's drives and where".

I see. However, you are expecting everyone to go in and clean up files left by uninstallers (mostly config files I guess and registry items). Wouldn't the majority of people delete/mess with stuff they don't know ? Although I guess being on Steam and installing games wouldn't make most of the users here the 'majority' (Majority: I get online and check my email send ims and upload photos to facebook/myspace/blahblah and get off of it(computer)). But then again the majority wouldn't know how to format/reinstall the OS I suppose.

[Flyingcow1103]

Registry cleaners like CCleaner are also handy. I usually run that once a month, have a scheduled defrag, and every once in a while I run a virus scan.

The machine still runs like the day I opened it.

I'd be careful with registry cleaners because they can still screw up your system. I've had it happen after doing a clean. I know my system doesn't have the neatest registry in fact I've noticed that I've got processes like ChiFuncExt.exe running, which comes up when you have errors in your registry. But it doesn't seem to be affecting performance so I'm not dealing with it. Registry errors shouldn't be killing performance if you've got a decent computer.

[SNOWSTORM]

Once.

You should never need to reformat your computer. If you properly keep it defragged, cleaned up manually and pay attention to your hardware and software usage, you shouldn't NEED to reformat - ever.

pretty much this

[T@F]

Xp damn that was at least twice a year or more even.

Now i'm on win 7 only once and that's because my hd failed.
Normally i keep on top of things so i never really need to re-install unless something goes wrong,or get a virus thats a nightmare to get rid of.
(very rare that though)

[~~ArdEnuff~~]

When it is knackered beyond repair or when I buy a new motherboard. I have nevr reinstalled Windows just for the sake of it or to "clean things up".

[cegrogan]

Registry cleaners like CCleaner are also handy. I usually run that once a month, have a scheduled defrag, and every once in a while I run a virus scan.

The machine still runs like the day I opened it.

I advise you to uninstall registrycc and forget you ever heard it. Easy way to brick your computer

[aplles]

Only when it gets really messed up. Haven't in like 5 years.

[Jagged Tooth]

Once or twice a year.

[lazy6pyro]

Rarely on my personal machine, mostly when I re-arrange my partitions/drives around or in a posting where I'm doing large hardware refresh. I do, however, maintain a base image in a VM, so if I do need to reformat, all I need is 20 minutes, and I have my generic install in about 20 minutes.

When I was in IT, I'd do it often on work computers. Unfortunately due to the applications and things that employees needed, I couldn't lock down their computers as much as I would have liked, thus viruses and Windows (user) rot would happen. My thought-processess was that if a Windows fix would take longer than an hour, I'd move their personal data off to the computer's second drive (or to a share). I'd then dump an image on it.

[TrippleD]

I never have. My lastest 2 desk tops have been running,

XP since 2004
Vista since 2008

[gNatFreak]

When my video card fried, and something weird happened that kept windows from running (not really sure why).

[pbassjunk]

I have never been OCD about anything in my life except RE: formatting/refreshing a computer. It so completely and utterly sucks.

The last time I reformat was maybe? 5-6 days ago. The longest stretch of an uptime (rather, installtime) I've had on this system can't be more than a few weeks. I blame early Win 95 pre OSR2 where the best way to deal with a borked system was to reinstall.

It's one of the reasons activation DRM wants to make me jump off a cliff.

I have nothing but sympathy for people who have to deal with whatever form their OCD takes in their day to day lives. It's crippling.

[Zekiran]

Why is your computer so completely borked after only a few weeks? You've got something terribly wrong on it, if it *needs* to be reinstalled. I'd say you need to reexamine why you're doing it, because if you know you don't need to.... don't do it.

[MADDOGGE]

XP was about every 3-4 months.

ME lets don't even go there.

Vista twice since it released. Very stable if slow. Once when I screwed it up and the second time when I got Win7 and set up partitions.

Win7 once since release when linux wiped my Win7 partition :mad::mad:.

[Technogeek1994]

Since I have Linux rather than Windows? The only time I have ever had to reinstall my OS was when my first HDD died on me. Other than that, I have never had to reinstall.

@MADDOGGE: Why would Linux have wiped out your Windows partition? Did you tell it to do so?

[markcocjin]

Ever since I had Windows 7, I never had to ref

[MSTRB]

When I sell my units.

Or like last week, when a new GPU gets constant TDR issues.

[TeKraken]

When the Motherboard or HDD bricks it

^this

[Tulipopa]

Formating and then reinstalling OS again is a good idea when:
1) You sell your computer or hard-drive.
2) You don't want any old files linked to you or found at all for that matter.
3) Fixing the problem takes longer than formatting and reinstalling the OS.

[RodgerM]

Formating and then reinstalling OS again is a good idea when:
1) You sell your computer or hard-drive.
2) You don't want any old files linked to you or found at all for that matter.
3) Fixing the problem takes longer than formatting and reinstalling the OS.

I'm sure even Guttman wont protect against the NSA and FBI.

[foadiron]

Never. XP has been rock solid since 2004, when I bought it to play Far Cry.

XP is the first OS MS have released that hardly ever crashes and is a genuine surprise when it does.

[Acetyl]

@MADDOGGE: Why would Linux have wiped out your Windows partition? Did you tell it to do so?

No, Ubuntu did a similar thing to me when it installed and left everything without a valid boot sector.

[Blockout]

"How often do you format and then reinstall your OS to your computer?"

Only when it crash. Can't say how often that happens, but I would say rarely..

[darkradeon]

only con HW or OS changes: like a new MB / CPU or a new storage settings, and with a new OS(software upgrade do always stupid things). This is 'cause I am to lazy.

[bluz74]

Only if I get a bad virus. Which has only happened once in the past 5 years about a year ago.

But it amazed me how easy it is to reformat now a days. So I might actually start doing once a year just because....*shrugs*

[Firestorm998]

I used to about every 6 months or so up until Windows 7. OS's before this seemed to 'degrade' over time but 7 is solid and stable so no reformats in the last couple of years.

[epicphail]

Once and it was cause I used CCleaner and it jacked up my registry lesson learned. But its not that bad anymore pretty quick to do and as long as I can backup all my steam games its not really a problem.

[Pebr]

When enough little annoyances have built up over time that it's time to start over.

[Seph64]

I try to keep myself from formatting and reinstalling Windows as much as possible. It's such a hassle to backup my info right before a formatting.

The last time I had to format my drive and reinstall the OS was when I had to install a new Hard Drive.

[ddrkreature]

I don't format my drive. I just upgrade my OS when a new one comes out. might skip on Windows 8 given what I've seen so far though

[Orko...]

I'd be careful with registry cleaners because they can still screw up your system.
Agreed. I've looked at a number of registry cleaners and they all make stupid mistakes.

A good example is one that wanted to delete entries from the section that starts programs when windows starts because they had command line parameters in the command and the registry cleaner tried to find the file with the command line parameters as part of the file name.

Another one wanted to remove a bunch of font entries because it thought that true type fonts was the only type of font there was so any font that had an extension other than .ttf it wanted to delete.

For me I just look at it this way. Microsoft knows more about the registry than any body else, why don't they have a registry cleaner that either comes with Windows or is a separate product? The only answer I can come up with is because they've determined that there is no way to automate safely cleaning the registry. So I don't even bother to try. Except for entries that start a service or process or program. The extra registry entries only take up space, they have no effect on the computer's performance.

When I need to uninstall something, I use Revo Uninstaller (http://www.revouninstaller.com/) (the free version) to help me find left over registry entries and files for deletion.

[Fish-E]

I'm planning on starting doing this once a year.

Unfortunately I've had to delay it as I planned on buying a Solid State Drive and a 2TB Hard Drive and installing Windows / files onto them. Unfortunately I don't have enough money :(

[KK_reborn]

You should never need to reformat your computer. If you properly keep it defragged, cleaned up manually and pay attention to your hardware and software usage, you shouldn't NEED to reformat - ever.This.

[surgeon]

Once when I upgraded to XP, then again when I upgraded my entire PC, then once more when I built another new PC with Win 7.

I hate backing up and thinking I might've missed something, so I usually buy a new HD when I do format, that way I can keep my old HD and copy everything over.

[Blackops]

When a system restore isn't enough which is usually once every 400 or so days.

[Orko...]

I hate backing up and thinking I might've missed something, so I usually buy a new HD when I do format, that way I can keep my old HD and copy everything over.
I back up my system every week as part of my weekly system maintenance routine. My media of choice for the backups is external USB hard drives. I have my backups aranged so that the most I can ever lose is one week.

[surgeon]

I back up my system every week as part of my weekly system maintenance routine. My media of choice for the backups is external USB hard drives. I have my backups aranged so that the most I can ever lose is one week.

I back things up too on a 2nd internal drive, but as a mapper, I have thousands of textures, models etc, including uncompiled versions. I could make dozens in one week, or finish a whole area of a map, so even losing one week's work would be a huge setback.

Also by the time I need to reformat, my HDD is usually too small so I need to buy a new one anyway.

[lazy6pyro]

I back things up too on a 2nd internal drive, but as a mapper, I have thousands of textures, models etc, including uncompiled versions. I could make dozens in one week, or finish a whole area of a map, so even losing one week's work would be a huge setback.

Also by the time I need to reformat, my HDD is usually too small so I need to buy a new one anyway.

I can certainly feel you. A 3d artist or even a programmer can create gigabytes worth of data in a short amount of time out of essentially nothing. It's all the more reason to take the time and really invest (if not your time, some money) in a completely effective backup and possibly a revisioning solution.

What I do is that I have known folders that have all of my projects and sub projects in it. In one of my back-up solutions, I have daily incremental backups, so I can keep up with the revisions of the data. This helps that if I save over the source file (like flattening a texture in Photoshop that I shouldn't have) I can go back a day or two and nab the original file as a copy and merge the two together.

For many of the multi-user projects I work on, we use a hosted revisioning system (specifically Tortoise SVN) on someone's VPS. This allows us to not only sync our data together, but also keeps track of revisioning, so we can go back several committed versions of the same file if need be. It works wonders, and combined with my personal back-up solution, an amazing safety net.

However, I intentionally keep my OS drive/partition small, but then have a mapped user drive that becomes where all newly created users, program files, program data, pagefile, and ect go. This way, if I was being a lazy moron, I can immediately switch the variables in the registry and boot into the local admin (the only user that's set up on the OS install drive) and be perfectly fine. If I feel even lazier, I have a couple of entire OS or drive sand-boxing applications that won't save any changes on the folders or drives I've determined and will be wiped away upon reboot.

[ledbelly]

Once.

You should never need to reformat your computer. If you properly keep it defragged, cleaned up manually and pay attention to your hardware and software usage, you shouldn't NEED to reformat - ever.

Good luck never reinstalling Windows 98 or XP.

[Menphues]

Never... unless I need to like a new motherboard or my OS is failing or something.

Other than that I do not do it. Doesn't need to be done!

[lazy6pyro]

Never... unless I need to like a new motherboard or my OS is failing or something.

Other than that I do not do it. Doesn't need to be done!

If you have a very strong grasp on the registry and files/folders in the System32 folder, you can fix (tossing out a percentage out of my rear here) I'd say 75-80% of Windows or even malware issues. The great thing about the registry is that it's Windows's brain; if you cut out all references to an installed application in the registry, then Windows will believe it's not installed any more (even if you deleted no actual files). Same can be done the opposite way (which I've done, but it was a pain), to install applications without the original installer.

The only major question is if it's worth the time to do it. For those that let guard and diligence slide (or if you're in IT and have to trust other people to not screw things up), then a couple of hours every 6 months to a year is worth it for them. That said, unnecessary and excessive reformatting certainly can have an impact on your drive's life-span. Though drives are built to be rewritten over many thousands of time, there's still that risk that you're wearing it out.

[Zekiran]

Good luck never reinstalling Windows 98 or XP.

I never had to reinstall either of them. My 98 machine ran for... I dunno, until about at least a year after XP came out, I got XP while the next Windows release had already come out. Neither of those machines needed to be reinstalled - ever, until the actual hard drives died and I had to replace those.

My laptop's been running XP for... jeez. Since like 06. Never had an issue with that either. My new rig is running 7 and I'll be skipping 8 - every other release of Windows seems to work best. Hell I went from 3.1 to 98 to XP to 7, and to my recollection the ONLY reason I *ever* had to do a new install was due to hardware failure and not any software/virus issues.

[MADDOGGE]

@MADDOGGE: Why would Linux have wiped out your Windows partition? Did you tell it to do so?Actually I didn't. To this day I'm not sure exactly what went wrong.:confused:

[AsheMan]

I have never had to format or reinstall the OS on any of my computers. The only time I get a new OS is when I buy a new computer.

[~~ArdEnuff~~]

I have never been OCD about anything in my life except RE: formatting/refreshing a computer. It so completely and utterly sucks.
You need to image your build, or sort out your OCD.

[Eunos]

When it goes wonky, I can normally format it and put back on what I use faster then looking into what's wrong and fixing it.

[generic]

When I had Win98, I reinstalled so many times I remembered the CD key along with several game keys off by heart. I was new to computers back then but I swear the damn thing began rotting on its own without my inexperience helping it along. "Illegal Operation" and using IE6 has scarred me for life.

XP was much better. The only times I needed to reinstall was when I screwed up. I only recently installed Windows 7 to replace my XP partition and have no plans to reinstall it or my games. That's why I held onto XP for so long - I hate the thought of reinstalling and configure everything.

As for my Ubuntu partition, I've been upgrading it ever since Karmic. No reinstalls so far. The live CD has got me out of several sticky situations, mostly when GRUB gets angry.

[pbassjunk]

Why is your computer so completely borked after only a few weeks? You've got something terribly wrong on it, if it *needs* to be reinstalled. I'd say you need to reexamine why you're doing it, because if you know you don't need to.... don't do it.

It's not.. it's just an psych OCD thing. 'I could have setup as raid 0 rather than 2 drives', and then later, 'i should have setup as 2 drives rather than raid 0'.

It's a thinking too much about things issue.

That being said, meh, I'm done reformatting. Going to keep this system running until it dies on me.