How often do you reinstall?

[prx984]

i havent reloaded my laptop in quite a long time now, im proud of myself

[Andromeda43]

i havent reloaded my laptop in quite a long time now, im proud of myself

And, I'm proud of you too.

In the business world, when you have to completely reload a computer, it's often a complete disaster.

When you work in that environment for as many years as I did, you learn to do "Maintenance" to prevent those disasters.

And, of course, Backup, Backup, Backup!

Remember: "The only bad backup is the one you decided NOT to do".

[prx984]

i havent reloaded my laptop in quite a long time now, im proud of myself

And, I'm proud of you too.

In the business world, when you have to completely reload a computer, it's often a complete disaster.

When you work in that environment for as many years as I did, you learn to do "Maintenance" to prevent those disasters.

And, of course, Backup, Backup, Backup!

Remember: "The only bad backup is the one you decided NOT to do".

thanks

heres how i back up my computer. i use savepart. its on that thread that i linked too. its a good free piece of software too. works quite well.

Edited August 3, 2006 by Cygnus

[spacesurfer]

Remember: "The only bad backup is the one you decided NOT to do".

Am I sorry I didn't backup my hard drive. It failed and I lost everything. Oh, well. You have to learn to live on.

[Brando569]

when i used to use windows as my main os (i use linux now) i would reinstall every few months, no more then 6 months

[K e n]

Once a year on my main machines, every weekend on my test machines...

even if my main develops problems I try to stick it out by sorting the

problem, it's the only true way to learn how things work by fixing them,

formatting everytime you have a problem is just the easy way out, &

no experience to be gained as such...

Iv'e learned more about the system by fixing it, than I would from

re-installing it...

[nitroshift]

Norton Ghost rules! Install, update, tweak then image... Putting the image back takes only a few minutes vs. 1 hour + to format, install windows, programs, run updates, etc., etc...

@Andromeda43 You`re ever so right!

[GeneralMandible]

There wasn't an option for "When the $#!t hits the fan"

I installed XP on my current system in January of 04. It's still running fine. With 98 I reinstalled every year, because it would eventually start wiggin out. I have a seperate dirve with a Ghost image as a backup. I run periodic incramentals for the data. Hopefully if, god forbid, my RAID fails, I should be able to boot to the backup drive & install updates.

I feel that XP is a solid OS as long as you saty on top of the maintenance. I plan to reformat when I build a new machine next spring. Shooting for 3 years, Woohoo!!

[Messerschmitt]

Ususaly half a year, but this last instalation is over a year and keeps going. Don't go on pr0n sites FTW!

[Andromeda43]

There wasn't an option for "When the $#!t hits the fan"

I installed XP on my current system in January of 04. It's still running fine. With 98 I reinstalled every year, because it would eventually start wiggin out. I have a seperate dirve with a Ghost image as a backup. I run periodic incramentals for the data. Hopefully if, god forbid, my RAID fails, I should be able to boot to the backup drive & install updates.

I feel that XP is a solid OS as long as you saty on top of the maintenance. I plan to reformat when I build a new machine next spring. Shooting for 3 years, Woohoo!!

Fabulous.....absolutely fabulous!!!

I evaluate so many new programs each week that my computer can get messed up in a heartbeat.

SO, I try to follow my own (good) advise and Backup, Backup, Backup!

I've developed this crazy system where I have all my partitions (two drives) set up in FAT-32 mode.

I use Ghost 2003 as my backup program....not the full GUI, but the Ghost.exe file on a bootable floppy (or CD).

From that humble beginning, I can boot up my system, clean out the pagefile, old restore points and all the junk files before I run Ghost. This saves me about 2 gig's of space in my Backup Image File.

With my well tuned system and SATA hard drive a Ghost backup of C: takes me less than five minutes.

I turn right around and do a Ghost Restore to C:. Another five.

The result is a C: drive that's perfectly ordered with NO spaces and NO fragmentation.

As soon as XP boots again, it remakes the pagefile and a new restore point.

My freshly Restored HD looks like this:

I do this at least twice every week.

The backup Image files are stored on my backup drive for a quickie Restore and written to DVD once a week for permanent backup in case the house burns down or blows away in a hurricane. The backup DVD's are kept in a vault in town about twenty miles away.

I haven't had to reinstall windows and do a complete reinstall of everything in several years.

I never will.

Cheers!

Andromeda43 B)

[bonestonne]

well, on my main hard drive, i reinstall windows about once every year and a half. so far i just had to reinstall vista for a little f-up i made, but its all good now. runs fine, minimal software, everything i need is on there. just not the printer

[videobruce]

Almost 40% do this once a month??

[Andromeda43]

Norton Ghost rules! Install, update, tweak then image... Putting the image back takes only a few minutes vs. 1 hour + to format, install windows, programs, run updates, etc., etc...

@Andromeda43 You`re ever so right!

Unlike so many forum participants, I don't have just this one computer to take care of.

I have hundreds of customers, some of them corporate Hq's.

Telling them they have to reinstall their OS several times a year would get me lynched.

So I set them up with a weekly Cleanup routine and Ghost backup.

With proper maintenance, any system should run for years without ever having to be rebuilt.

I try to see each PC twice a year for cleaning and updating.

Keeping tower computers UP off of the floor and providing coolers for the HD's has cut down on system crashes immensely.

Success in running hundreds of computers with a minimum of problems is about 10% technology and 90% common sense.

Remember, the only bad backup is that one you decided NOT to do.

Good Luck,

Andromeda43

[Thunderbolt 2864]

I prefer leaving the backup image on my other hard drive, much faster. I prefer not to burn it into a DVD disk, because I tend to update the image sometimes, and its much quicker when you reimage it from a drive than a CD. Eliminates the 10 minute wait (On Acronis True Image)

I don't like Norton Ghost 9.0, can't say about the previous versions. It is so slow and unreliable, one time I reimaged using Norton Ghost 9.0, and the partition wouldn't even boot. Bloody POS software.

[DeathNACan]

About every three months or whenever I screw it up.