How Often do you reinstall your OS?

[CaelThunderwing]

i Self inflict endless pain and torture ..err. "Reinstall" My OS once a year (lil joke on how much a pain it is to recover from re-install)

im dualbooting between Windows 7 32bit and 64bit. just debating if i should make 64bit the main OS despite it'd only let me access a mere extra 512MB Ram

[† TheChaosLegion]

I do it every few months or so, mostly out of pure boredom. Re-installing is a quick and easy process for me since I keep all the installers for my programs on my storage drive, so the whole process might take about 2 hours depending on how fast I want to work. It's a process I actually enjoy.

Heh, I remember back when I used to make my own custom XP disks I would format every month to test new addons and other tweaks.

[Mannan]

after about 3 to 5 months..... well it mostly depends on the viruses or bugs etc

[ウェンキ Leki]

I do it atleast one every 2 years or so.

Mainly for viruses, or the fact that too much crap on the computer.

But I do back up important stuff, like my photoshop files and anime.

[Koby]

I don't unless I ABSOLUTELY have to. Reason being, on XP I can only activate it 5x using the same key before the key becomes invalid so with limited amount of times to install I never wanted to use them all up. This PC definitely could use a fresh install but I'm too lazy to bother with it and probably wont until it just flat out doesn't work. It's already to the point that a lot of stuff doesn't work, gives off errors, and it freezes up sometimes but meh.

[Ma5K2]

i havent had to reinstall my os for years now since ive had 3 computers in the last 4(?, maybe 5) years so my computer never really needs it.

[idl12]

Hmm..is it weird that I've never reinstalled my Os before, I mean I installed it on any computers that I've built, but it never really dawned on me to reinstall it for any reason and so far the only time I've ver had problems due to freezez, crashes and unstable performance were all due to hardware problems.

[† L4ugh]

I usually do a reinstall once every year but I haven't done it for the past year and half out of laziness. I think when I finally do reinstall it I'm going to do it right and clone that partition so I won't have to go through the hassle of redownloading all the damn windows updates every time I reinstall.

[Pinkie Pie]

I don't unless I ABSOLUTELY have to. Reason being, on XP I can only activate it 5x using the same key before the key becomes invalid so with limited amount of times to install I never wanted to use them all up. This PC definitely could use a fresh install but I'm too lazy to bother with it and probably wont until it just flat out doesn't work. It's already to the point that a lot of stuff doesn't work, gives off errors, and it freezes up sometimes but meh.

[ramdasika]

I reinstall 6 months to ensure usablity

so sos so sos ossosososos

I am sorry for my previous post my keyboard wasnt working well

sorry

Ok what is it that makes u inflict self pain

[ChrisBeSmokin]

I don't unless I ABSOLUTELY have to. Reason being, on XP I can only activate it 5x using the same key before the key becomes invalid so with limited amount of times to install I never wanted to use them all up. This PC definitely could use a fresh install but I'm too lazy to bother with it and probably wont until it just flat out doesn't work. It's already to the point that a lot of stuff doesn't work, gives off errors, and it freezes up sometimes but meh.

[Asch]

I "reinstall" my os every month, technically speaking and as a Linux user, I don't upgrade but reinstall the os, and use a dynamic home for all my programs and files, so I get them after reinstalling the os without any hassle, on windows pc, I do it whenever it takes more than 10s to start PS >

[Allithus]

I remember hearing that OS like Xp tends to build up a lot of garbage in the registry due to programs not cleaning up entries that no longer valid, and it was suggested to reinstall at least once a year.

it's what I do since I have backed up all documents,videos and images on my external hard drives.

[Wake]

I normally only reinstall when I have to, which has been 4 times in the last three years (that's when I go my laptop), but the last time was 9 months ago. Though my computer is a bit bogged down and I might just reinstall if I ever have the time just to clean it up a bit.

[cthullu]

I have a laptop as my torrent box and it gets done every 6 months, my desktop probably wont get done for 2 years,.

[nikweh]

Some opinions and references:-

1) http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=66904.0

2) http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/35678/ask-the-readers-how-often-do-you-reinstall-your-operating-system/

3) http://blog.reimage.com/computer-problems/why-you-dont-need-to-regularly-reinstall-windows/

4) http://www.easydesksoftware.com/reinstall.htm

5) http://lifehacker.com/5435523/you-dont-need-to-regularly-reinstall-windows-heres-why

6) http://www.techsupportalert.com/partitioning-hard-drives-1.htm

[GigaTurtle]

i reinstall 2-3 times a year on average, last year i did a format with sector wipe about every month do to the fact my poor laptop is used by a hand full of people, some of them don't know how to avoid a virus i have a dual boot, windows XP *Black editions so i don't have to use a stupid activation code.* and windows 7 32 bit.

[Renzourin]

i was just forced to last night because of a crash

[† ballard]

I hate reinstalling windows ... I try my best to avoid it unless it's completely necessary. Something I started doing recently was installing my OS on a backup hard drive with all my programs on it ready to go. So if anything were to happen to my current install I could just swap hard drives.

[Kurremkarmerruk]

i haven't had to on my windows 7 laptop. I defrag and clean out the registry and any other junk once a week though. Haven't felt any clunkiness at all yet, it's been almost 2 years.

Just curious, to anyone who knows:

what would be the difference between reinstalling and just restoring back to a post-install system restore point?