How often do you reinstall windows?

[ArZuNeOs]

my mom's machine once in 4 months

mine once in 2 months.....i switch between server & XP.....& its fun .....

VMware is nice but i try it the old way....just like the feel of cleaning the mud of your bike & happy to see it sparkling & shiny

 

[nileshgr]

^the unknown is a fedora dual boot user

NO!!!!! I am only a Fedora User. I HATE nasty windows.

 

[almighty]

guys do all ur experiments in VMware or virtual machine.

I am totaly agreed mate, but sometimes it wont works as what u expect
coz i am trying to slipstream sata/raid driver in xp, when i finish and install on vmachine or vpc... dere it runs fine... on vpc it detects my sata hdd but while installing on hdd , it gives problem....

so for experiment we cant trust vpc for everything....
for application and so on its ok , but for os ,trust lavel is only 99%

 

[gxsaurav]

Wht? Not using a AV and still running well for years? Do u use ur PC?

Yup...just some common sense, that it. Who needs an AV , Virus are already over hyped.

saale kitna jut balata hai tu... nark mein jayega

I hope U know that we MVPs got Vista long before normal people got it in Jan 2007

it has less driver support.

Out of the box, Vista supports 50k hardwares out there. Much more then Windows XP, & with each passing day driver support is only getting better.

If you have a hardware with Windows XP driver, then 95% chances are that u can use that with Windows Vista too, except for Creative Sound cards & AMD/nVidia graphics card. They need vista compliant drivers.

@ iMav

Although I m using Creative Audigy LS sound card (Audigy 1) but 865GBF's onbaord sound card is working fine here with vista out of the box.

When we are in a working enviroment, there are lot of chances virus can attack, like the emails we download, the files we download etc etc. It is not possible to check each and everything every time.

Plz read again, there are only 2 ways a virus can come into a computer

1) Internet - > I use outlook & when I check my mails, I select to download only the headers & not the whole mail due to which I can delete which ever mail I don't need without even downloading it to my computer, directly from yahoo & gmail.

WLMD already has this feature turned on by default. It downloads a mail only when u open it.

2) CD, DVD, Pen drives etc -> I have autorun disabled here. I simply right click on the drive & select open, to check whether it is infected by those autorun virus or not. If it shows an "Install" link in right click menu, then it means it is either a virus or autorun software. In this case, I simply right click & select open & manually click on the real setup.exe or whatever file i need.

I don't use default Icons supplied by Vista for file type icons, so if a virus based exe file has icon of say a rar file, then I know its not a rar file cos I m not using the default RAR icon.

3) I download only from trusted sources like betanews. filehippo, download.com etc

@ mediator

Do u even know what PerfectDisk, CCleaner & Tune up utilities are

For example - for a student, it does not matter at all, install , partition, reinstall - no problems. Data ? Nothing is important

Yo, nothing like that.....do u know how important porn collection is for a student

For example - I can't chk webmail everytime before downloading emails, can't use IMAP either. It downloads directly. So theres no guarantee that it has no virus.

What IMAP U use? Can't u just select to download the headers. Try WLMD.

Almost all software companies I know use good AV in their systems. When data is important, AV is also inevitable.

See, an extra layer of precaution is good...but not always required if U know what u r doing with computers.

System restore & volume shadow copy in Vista is good, but I don't need them cos I know what i m installing etc

afair M$ even recommends a reinstallation before 6 months or so.

A Plain FUD form Lingeek & Window haters

VMware is good, even I use a VM XP installation for those Apps which only run in XP, or when I need to test something. If anything goes wrong, I simply "restore" the VM image.

 

[gaurav_indian]

Main toh jab bore hota hu tabhi maarta hu jyada samajh mein aa raha hai kya reinstall maarne ki baat kar raha hu. But seriously once in 2 months.

 

[vish786]

(recently installed windows)ma comp is so badly screwed up coz of my experiments on it(even though exp's dont have any relation to dates [date.cpl]... )its still screwed up... that i cant even change my date directly... aaaahhhh...

i need to change my date in DOS, can u believe this

ab ye mat puchna kya exp hai

 

[iMav]

@ iMav

Although I m using Creative Audigy LS sound card (Audigy 1) but 865GBF's onbaord sound card is working fine here with vista out of the box.

i hope u remmber the gtalk/yahoo problem

 

[gaurav_indian]

(recently installed windows)ma comp is so badly screwed up coz of my experiments on it(even though exp's dont have any relation to dates [date.cpl]... )its still screwed up... that i cant even change my date directly... aaaahhhh...

i need to change my date in DOS, can u believe this

ab ye mat puchna kya exp hai

kya experiment hai bata na?

offtopic : new harry potter avatar

 

[dantool]

once in three months...yarr koi permanent solution nahin hai kya....grrrrr

 

[Ankur Gupta]

^^Make an image of the drive after installing essential softwares after clean install and use that whenever you want to clean format...

 

[naveen_reloaded]

whenever i feel bored ..

 

[infra_red_dude]

Varies (for me and for everyone for sure!). Its been almost 1 year now since I've reinstalled Windows on my dad's system. But then hardly any new software is installed on that system. So if you don't fiddle around too much with the system (like play around wid drivers, install/uninstall too many software or change hardware and the system is well protected by av+firewall) reinstallation is almost never necessary.

But on my lappy I inevitably hafta reinstall every 4-5 months or so due to all the software I install and remove (can't use VMware as performance takes a hit). A bloated system32 and registry make windows crawl. No matter what cleaning tools I use its not possible to remove 100% junk. It slowly aggregates and finally brings down the system to its knees.

BTW, yester for the first time in about 6 years my system had an infection by the mspowerpoint.exe (the gmail virus coded by one of the esteemed members of this forum!!!). All the security measures were taken yet the infection. No AV was able to remove it anyways as its not detected by most I believe.

I guess I'll be installing an AV in my Laptop. I don't remember when was teh last time I had an AV. But I guess its time I say Hi to some AV after an era! As din said, it offloads some work from the user. Tho, its not correct to say that now you haf an AV do anything and everything and yet be safe!

 

[RCuber]

hey IRD.. KIS detected it on my system ..

 

[goobimama]

You lucky guys. Guess what. I have to manage 9 Windows machines in my Dad's office. Imagine the number of times i have to reinstall! And at least you guys are a little geeky, the people using the PCs in the office are normal people!

Of course, both my Macs, not even once. The iBook had a disk crash, but besides that nothing.

 

[infra_red_dude]

I haf no idea why KIS did not detect it. I haf made a BartPE CD made wid KAV. Definitions are updated to Sept. last week. This also has the latest version of stinger, ClamAV and avast. None detected.

 

[mediator]

@ mediator

Do u even know what PerfectDisk, CCleaner & Tune up utilities are

You think I never used such trash? They r only a bunch of space hungry apps meant to somehow improve an OS that was not given 'out of box' stabilty and solid improvement and has 'out of box' loaded crapwares such as registry and disk-defragement!

Like I said 'out-of-box' windows is nuthing but a trashware, so end-users like u arm it with such apps also called crapwares, as windows is windows and is bound to get slow and crappier over the time!

Ur use of perfectdisk is a solid proof that u dont trust in disk defragement and hence another proof how windows is loaded with 'out of box' crapwares! Its a pity that MS dint give a 'tuned' OS that its users have to use apps like 'tune-up utilties'. We have to 'learn' so much if we do it by gpedit, services.msc!
And then ccleaner....WTH!

It seems that u dont do any useful work on ur PC, but only keep cleaning it regularly like its some kinda showpiece! *www.smileyhut.com/confused/g.gif

 

[Kiran.dks]

I haf no idea why KIS did not detect it. I haf made a BartPE CD made wid KAV. Definitions are updated to Sept. last week. This also has the latest version of stinger, ClamAV and avast. None detected.

So here it goes. Same detection problem! The same powerpoint.exe virus. My AOL didn't detect it. At last Antivir did the job for me.
For more details check this thread: *www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=70324

I think your scenario was also same.

 

[s18000rpm]

Q. How often do you reinstall windows?

A. 1. Never on my HP Pavilion (original OEM XP), till date never had system slowdowns or other problems.

2. Quite often on my new system, Pirated XP Pro.
explorer crashes every now & then, crashes when i select "Restart" from Start Menu...

going to re-install again in few days.