How often to ReInstall XP?

[speedy_s]

Never. Had a pc for 2 years. Never did a re install.

[noah]

ghost images, im a great fan

[jonathan_phang]

Varies really, depending on what you use it for and what you deem acceptable performance. I may take up doing a ghost image, but ive been saying that for ages, everytime I do a reformat I forget and by the time i realise, its too late!!!

I've done it so often that I reckon that my PB is about 40mins including apps codecs etc!

[conan]

ghost images, im a great fan

Me too, have a base ghost image of XP and all my essential drivers and apps installed. Usually transfer it on every 6 months or so.

[khizman]

isnt the best way to install xp and then install office 2k, drivers etc and then make an image of ure hdd and burn it to dvdrom?

[Howard]

Most I've had to do it is 3 times in one day. LOL.

Otherwise it stays as it is from a month up until a year, depending on if I have problems or not. I only really re-install if I come up against a problem that isn't easily solved without making the system sluggish and bloated so I just format. But I'm pretty careful about what I do install that might have an effect so I'm usually alright

[conan]

isnt the best way to install xp and then install office 2k, drivers etc and then make an image of ure hdd and burn it to dvdrom?

If you can do then yes. With office and the rest of my apps installed it wouldn't fit on a DVD rom. Although, saying that I have a dual layer writer now so I might do that

[nvening]

man, when i first joined these forums i got so much stick for saying format every 6 months, and u all do it a few times a day!

[Hans Voralberg]

Each month, can't believe how much crap u got after a month. By the way, i have to do it 8 times last month because the hardware jsut keep messing up.

[iranu]

This is extreme housekeeping! My XP installs usually last for years, but then I am carefull with what I install..

S.

I couldn't agree more. A re-install should only be necessary when windows is borked or is running really slow.

I made a list of what I thought you should do to keep windows running sweetly on another thread. Copied here now.

1. Don't install loads of cr*p on it.

2. Use Regcleaner to clean entries left after an uninstall. CAREFUL.

3. Defrag often. I use Diskeeper which is scheduled to defrag when screensaver comes on.

4. Run anti-spyware and anti-virus software.

5. Keep hardware drivers and windows/software upto date.

6. Disable any programs that run in the background on start up that you don't need.

7. Ditto services.

8. Run windows on it's own partition. Put the paging file on a separate physical drive.

9. Be ruthlessly organised and disciplined i.e. have a good file structure and always save files to the right location. I'm sure others have their methods I do this

Disks 1 + 2 raid 0 (yes I'm aware of the downsides)

C: Windows (only)
D: Applications (anti-virus, fire wall, office, firefox etc)
E: Storage broken down into the following files. Downloads, Music, Video, Applications (so I don't have to re-dl them after fresh windows install)
G: Games (only)

Disk 3

F: Backup plus pagefile (back up is a copy of storage plus registry, my docs etc. I also back up onto cd or dvd)

Are there others I've missed?

There is nothing as clean feeling as a fresh install but imho it's a pain to re-install updates/hotfixes/games/apps etc even though I'm very proficient at doing it.

[Thorsson]

Before XP I used to do it every 3-6 months, but XP is lasting around a year in normal situations. I usually do a major upgrade every year and re-install then.

P.S. With modern hard disks defragging is a waste of time.

[weebroonieuk]

Before XP I used to do it every 3-6 months, but XP is lasting around a year in normal situations. I usually do a major upgrade every year and re-install then.

P.S. With modern hard disks defragging is a waste of time.

lol no its not

[Thorsson]

lol no its not

lol yes it is

[iranu]

Thorsson - you may do as you please including posting your entitled opinion, however I'm with Weebroonieuk on this one.

E.g.

As I write I have just analysed my C drive (windows only) using Diskeeper. It tells me that defragging my hd will give a 48% improvement for read times of defragmented files. (and a 3% improvement for all files) with a moderately fragmented drive of 1.05 fragments per file.

I would love to see a post of your Drive map for C:

[suryad]

Defragging does help. pcpitstop.com will attest to it. I reinstall XP hmm only when I really really need to. I am gonna upgrade my laptop hdd so I am going to have to reintall XP but then again it will be an nLite image. Cant wait to see if the shrinking worked!! Finally a lite XP!! Tools like Crap Cleaner and System Mechanic keep my machine light and fast.

[nimbu]

I used to do it every 3 months, I had a nice ghost image setup burned onto a DVD that did it for me, however since moving to 875 chipset and using the integrated RAID, when i tried the version of ghost I have it didnt work, so its been about 9months. Machine is dying for a reformat, but i cba, I have a full desktop of icons as im lazy and just dl stuff to there.

Just checked, i have more icons then there is space, lol, they actually either overlap or run off the desktop. .me gulps and starts to look for the XP CD.