How often do you reinstall Windows?

[superboyac]

It's getting to the time where I'm thinking of reinstalling Windows XP.  I've been having problems with my system tray, and the latest version of Kaspersky was turned off for a few days because I felt it was slowing down my computer, and I think I got a virus (even though kasperksy has now cleaned it).  Also, my exe file association is broken, so I can't run any exe files until I fix it.
And it's been several years since I last installed Windows, I figure it's as good a time as any.  But I swear, since joining DC, I've installed so many programs on this computer, it's ridiculous!  It will take me a while to reinstall everything.

[PPLandry]

My Acer Travelmate 660 notebook is now 4.5 years old and still on the original XP installation. System restore did rescue it a few times  .

In Win98 days, you could simply re-install Windows without erasing your HD and re-installing all software. It refreshed the OS and often (not always) did fix it. I would try to do this first (but I'm no OS expert, perhaps even do it with XP SP3 which I read is pretty stable).

I fear of day I'll need to change PC: Re-install/configure everything = 1 week of non-productive work, plus months of tuning/tweaking everything...

[Deozaan]

I usually do it about once a year, but now that I think about it I think that's because I usually upgraded something that often. Something like a new hard drive, where I wanted to reorganize everything.

Sometimes, though, on my secondary computer (this one I'm typing on actually, since I can't get my primary computer to start) when it gets filled with crap I just format and reinstall. But I think it was late 2006 since I last did it on this machine.

@PPLandry: System Restore does stuff for you? Any time I try to restore to a restore point, it takes forever to reboot and it just tells me that it was unsuccessful. System Restore has always been worthless to me because it always tells me after the fact of doing it that it couldn't do it.

[mrainey]

Never.  I make an image backup once a week, takes twenty minutes .  Maybe five times in the past six years I've had to use one of them to restore.  I copy important work to a thumb drive in between backups.  I use JV16, very carefully, to keep track of things in the registry.

My XP installation seems to run as fast as ever.

[PPLandry]

@PPLandry: System Restore does stuff for you? Any time I try to restore to a restore point, it takes forever to reboot and it just tells me that it was unsuccessful. System Restore has always been worthless to me because it always tells me after the fact of doing it that it couldn't do it.

Works fine and is speedy. But then again, I work on a notebook, nothing ever changes...

[superboyac]

well, I might be backtracking now.  I fixed my problems, so maybe I won't reinstall after all.  Still, I can't help feeling like a fresh reinstall would be nice.  Too much work, though.

[MrCrispy]

My solution is also to take image backups. The trick is to always keep all data on a separate drive (or at least partition), and point all OS and programs to that location. The install all essential programs, and use portable versions of programs whenever possible, and image that as a baseline image. Then when you restore an image, you are still working with current data but with a fresh OS, registry and system partition.

[bbudd]

        With Xp had 2 years no reinstall,then last year 2 bad virus attacks made me format twice.But with a ghost image on another drive its easy to reinstall.The difference between 1/2 hour and a full day doing all the program installs one by one,-and I keep all my installs in 1 folder for fast reference.
        One other thing to watch out for if your useing XP service pac3 and you try to uninstall it ALL the programs you installed after putting it in "May Not Work"after.

[Renegade]

I never reinstall. I've got boxes that have been running for years (2, 4, 4, 3, 7) that have never had more than 1 install.

[Armando]

I never REinstall either -- or very rarely... I think the only times I REinstalled windows were during NT 4.0/98 times. I might have reinstalled windows 2000 a couple times too... But that's a long time ago. I guess I'm careful and have good backup habits...

[zridling]

I reinstall once a year whether I need to or not. It gives me a chance to reprioritize my drives and programs, and with a fresh start, I get a new Registry. (I do the same on the GNU/Linux machines as well.)

[app103]

I am only going to consider the type of reinstalling in which you wipe it all out and start from scratch, since to me that would be what you were asking for, and not the type of 'repair install' that just refreshes system files.

My XP desktop: Still had original factory install it had when I got it in 2006, when the hardware mishaps killed it near beginning of March .

My daughter's XP laptop: Had to reinstall XP after replacing the hard drive that died. That was about a year ago.

My old long dead P3 (WinMe): Twice, the first day I had it, monthly after that. 

This 11 year old pc with Win98SE (before I wiped it out to install ME): 2 years on a single install, although I probably should have wiped it the day I got it.

This 11 year old pc with WinME: Still going strong and stable on the install from 2002, with only 1 repair install to fix a botched upgrade to IE6, some years back. It's starting to show it's age, though (a bit slower than it should be), so as soon as I have another machine to help with making backups, I am going to wipe it and reinstall ME, keeping the software collection on it kind of lean and get a bit more serious about testing stuff & writing for my long neglected Snailware blog.

[allen]

With 95/98, I used to re-install every six to eight months.  Beyond that, never.  My last XP system ran 3 or 4 years on the original install without any problems.  I haven't been using vista long enough to say, but I suspect it'll workout about the same as it did with XP--I'll be upgrading to a new PC before I manually re-install the OS.

[J-Mac]

Too often...

Yet not quite often enough!

Jim

Edit:  OK, I should clarify that.  By not often enough I mean that I have twice reinstalled Windows on four different machines in about 10 years.  But at the time of each I felt that even once was too often by the time I was done.