How often do you perform a clean install?

[TheLaserCucumber]

Only when it’s really needed, like something isn’t working or I get bluescreens.

[IKnight]

Literally never. Unless a virus or something comes along. 

[rheyL]

if my anti virus can't kill a virus, then that's the time to reformat my OS. 

 

updates are off and I'm still on Windows 7. no worries, no drama ?

[Coaxialgamer]

Only if needed or when performing major hardware updates ( motherboard , cpu , hdd )

[Ekst4zy]

When I have to / notice PC gets slow (which didn't happen for the past 4 years).

 

As long as you keep things "clean". There shouldn't be any reason to do a clean install IMHO. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

12 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Every year. I also keep images of my system in case the OS dies and needs to be cloned back to working.

Best recommended method? I should do that. Not sure if that's something I can put my Windows Server 2008 machine to good use.

3 hours ago, MEC-777 said:

Still running off the same Windows 8.1 install since September 2013. Survived the upgrade to 10 and still running great. The key is regular maintenance. Run disk clean up every now and then, delete junk you don't need anymore and keep viruses/malware away with regular scans and smart browsing. 

 

I don't see why anyone should have to do a fresh install every year or two. Especially if you're on an SSD. 

That's what I though too... I should do a platform upgrade. Something just isn't working out with my current build. 

[MEC-777]

25 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

 

That's what I though too... I should do a platform upgrade. Something just isn't working out with my current build. 

You are running some pretty old hardware. Probably time for a full system upgrade.

[LogicalDrm]

When I need to. Which in fact is later this year. I've had this Windows install from summer 2014 and its starting to show. Going to upgrade SSD too.

[ElZamo92]

Whenever I am having problems or an adware or something. it's a quick and easy solution to all my problems.  

[lukemcfc]

On 10/31/2017 at 4:51 AM, Jade said:

Every few months; usually when there's a major update (Creator's Update or Fall Creator's Update for example) or a Windows function seems to be misbehaving. Takes me like 60 minutes including installation thanks to my Boxstarter/Chocolatey script.

Sorry what script is that?

[Jade]

9 hours ago, lukemcfc said:

Sorry what script is that?

Using Boxstarter (built on Chocolatey but allows configuration of Windows) & Chocolatey, I can just install boxstarter and type one command --

start http://boxstarter.org/package/nr/url?https://windy.gnosticjade.net/boxstarter.txt

and get pretty much everything I need installed - application configuration is held in a different script, but you can see that this one configures Windows, to some extent. As you can see in that command snippet, it's running the script at https://windy.gnosticjade.net/boxstarter.txt - there's comments all over the script to tell you what's going on.

[MEC-777]

On 10/31/2017 at 9:49 PM, ElZamo92 said:

Whenever I am having problems or an adware or something. it's a quick and easy solution to all my problems.  

Doing a clean install of windows quick and easy? lol. 

 

It may not be the case with everyone and every situation, but I've never had any virus, malware or adware that I couldn't completely remove/kill. Running Malwarebytes in safe mode is quite effective.  

[lukemcfc]

8 hours ago, Jade said:

Using Boxstarter (built on Chocolatey but allows configuration of Windows) & Chocolatey, I can just install boxstarter and type one command --

start http://boxstarter.org/package/nr/url?https://windy.gnosticjade.net/boxstarter.txt

and get pretty much everything I need installed - application configuration is held in a different script, but you can see that this one configures Windows, to some extent. As you can see in that command snippet, it's running the script at https://windy.gnosticjade.net/boxstarter.txt - there's comments all over the script to tell you what's going on.

Okay I might try that out thanks!

[ElZamo92]

On 03/11/2017 at 1:05 AM, MEC-777 said:

Doing a clean install of windows quick and easy? lol. 

 

It may not be the case with everyone and every situation, but I've never had any virus, malware or adware that I couldn't completely remove/kill. Running Malwarebytes in safe mode is quite effective.  

It's easier than removing viruses and recovering corrupted data.

[SiverJohn17]

I reinstall any time I feel like I have too much junk on my computer. Thinking about doing a fresh install on the laptop I'm currently using and I did the most recent install ~6months ago. I run an Arch build so it takes seconds to rebuild though.

[MEC-777]

18 hours ago, ElZamo92 said:

It's easier than removing viruses and recovering corrupted data.

Depends on how infected the system is and what data has been corrupted. 

[88HD]

My main OS only gets reinstalled when needed, which isn't that often because I run 2 layers of backups. Other OS's I reinstall when I get bored. I run a few operating systems on my system just to play, Windows, Linux, BSD, Haiku, ReactOS, etc. Some are running via VM.