http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/08/04/xp
Ive never had to reinstall windows because of "degrading"
this guy has never heard of disk defragmenter and disk clean up im certain.

7/14/2006 12:13:50 PM

this was threadworthy.

.... really.

7/14/2006 12:21:22 PM

i think many people on here can relate to this half-life concept. i know i try out new software a lot and even though i uninstall it when i'm done with it, i do notice a degredation in performance and response. defraging doesn't always help. i typically reinstall windows every 12 months or so, just to get a fresh start.

7/14/2006 12:22:42 PM

i asked my neighbor if he'd ever defraged before cause his computer was slow as all balls

so i click the defrag thing

dude had like 75 percent fragmented files

7/14/2006 12:24:07 PM

I dont know.
when I got my T-42 Thinkpad a little under 3 years ago it came with a fresh install of win xp pro.
I purchased norton's firewall, installed the school's antivirus, spybot and adaware.
defragmented on occasion, it rarely said I needed to when I ran it

around six months later it was just bogged down. I dont install random crap from the internet, I kept it as clean as I could figgure out how, it just sloowed itself down. it would just barely run games like ut2004 and halo, whereas before it did alright, not great but alright. simple tasks like opening firefox, word took ages

I put Fedora Core 3 in a new partition, installed the 3rd party drivers for my vid card, and ut2004 ran just fine.

7/14/2006 12:29:55 PM

^^^really?
ive never experienced that.
my computer runs just as fast as it did when i built it.
i couldent handle reinstalling windows man i got lots of stuff on my hard drives like pictures of trips and music i would not want to erase every year.

^sometimes that can be attributed to hardware problems like dust and increased temperature. also it can be vid drivers that need to be updated i had problems playing games untill i got updates for my processor because most new games arent made yet to handle certain dual core processors and that was causing them to crash.

[Edited on July 14, 2006 at 12:33 PM. Reason : ]

7/14/2006 12:30:26 PM

^not hardware because I installed FC3 next to windows on another partition and everything ran fine
could be drivers, but I had the games installed pretty much a month after I got the laptop, and didnt make any significant changes for the next five.

I did install and uninstall a decent amount of programs (mostly store bought). limited disk space

7/14/2006 12:43:40 PM

yes, most people's computers bog down with programs, left over partially uninstalled programs, spyware, corrupted registry entries, etc.
even experienced computer user's have that problem. If you think that your computer runs just as fast now as the day you got it, you've forgotten what it felt like on that first day.

for my PCs, after 9-12 months, they still run very very good - probably 90-95% as new. but for some reason, I still "enjoy" a clean install.
And it's not a big deal really. First, you should be keeping all your docs and media on a seperate partition or another physical drive from your Windows install disc. That way you don't have to make back ups or "erase" any of it. 2nd, you can create installation discs with all your common programs, or just use a folder on your 2nd drive/partition to store installation files.
third, you can use Norton Ghost or something similar, and take a disc image right after your install, or after Windows install + SP2 + Windows Updates, or even after Windows Install + updates + Office + most common programs. Then at any point, you can just reinstall that disc image in about 5 minutes and you'll have a brand new computer.

7/14/2006 12:43:40 PM

that would be a good idea for me because i have lots of customized files and programs and tons of updates everywhere that even microsoft update dosent detect. I.E. i have to go to the hardware website and download all the updates and do them myself.
a reinstall from basic windows would be very time consumeing for me i guess.

7/14/2006 1:12:09 PM

Quote :

"i think many people on here can relate to this half-life concept. i know i try out new software a lot and even though i uninstall it when i'm done with it, i do notice a degredation in performance and response. defraging doesn't always help. i typically reinstall windows every 12 months or so, just to get a fresh start."

Yup, me too. Documents (music, video, pictures, etc) are on another drive so its really not that bad. Cleans out all the stray downloads, programs I don't use (I install the heavily used programs when I reinstall, so if I forget something but never miss it, it means I didn't really need it), and artifacts of uninstalled programs.

7/14/2006 3:05:26 PM

YanTheManV,
this guy is spot on and you post your anecdotal bullshit

I bet you haven't written any guides to help people with their computer problems

[Edited on July 14, 2006 at 3:23 PM. Reason : ok that's a bit harsh]

7/14/2006 3:23:20 PM

I want my ten minutes back. That must be the dumbest user on the planet.

7/14/2006 3:34:20 PM

wow, that guy could have reinstalled windows in like 4 steps (i did not actually count) instead of complaining about it. what a tool.

[Edited on July 14, 2006 at 3:44 PM. Reason : he prolly spent the whole day just posting that retarded list of retardedness...]

7/14/2006 3:43:30 PM

www.brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=376822

[Edited on July 14, 2006 at 3:47 PM. Reason : broken link]

7/14/2006 3:46:04 PM

Quote :

"i couldent handle reinstalling windows man i got lots of stuff on my hard drives like pictures of trips and music i would not want to erase every year."

jesus tapdacing christ

it's called a partition/partions for data and another partition for the os, if you don't have them on seperate drives to begin with

7/14/2006 4:26:36 PM

Aside from slightly longer seek times from fragmentation, my Mac runs pretty much just as fast as when it was new. It still wakes/sleeps near instantly, and everything else...

7/14/2006 11:29:05 PM

^ I thought the OS had stuff in there to prevent fragmentation, or something that ran automatically in the background to help keep your files organized.

If not, are there any utilities that will defragment the disk? My 2yrold powerbook is still pretty fast, but can sometimes slow down real bad when opening a large log file or something of the like.

7/15/2006 12:44:03 AM

here's a quick summary

Quote :

"I actually have a perfectly good product key, I just don’t know what it is."

Quote :

"Make mental note to hack boot.ini later..."

Quote :

"Having never done a clean install of XP..."

Quote :

"Wonder where the “Device Manager” is hiding..."

anybody else find this sequence funny?

Quote :

"# Reboot. # Doesn’t work. # “Take a tour of Windows XP!” I am. # Reboot. # Doesn’t work."

Quote :

"Dig. Dig. Dig. Aha. TweakUI requires Windows XP Service Pack 1."

and about 100 useless steps that are unrelated to a "clean install" of windows.

7/15/2006 12:38:14 PM

YanTheManV, one time I called you an idiot, and you wanted to know why I thought you were stupid.

Threads like this are why I think you're stupid.

7/15/2006 4:24:18 PM

Quote :

"i think many people on here can relate to this half-life concept. i know i try out new software a lot and even though i uninstall it when i'm done with it, i do notice a degredation in performance and response. defraging doesn't always help. i typically reinstall windows every 12 6 months or so, just to get a fresh start."

7/15/2006 4:29:42 PM

To make a post here that's actually on topic:

I have my C partition set for 25 Gigs and typically reinstall windows every 3-6 months/whenever I get bored. I know many people that do the same thing and (sadly) this is the norm for many people that are "in the know".

7/15/2006 4:52:46 PM

creating a separate partition (about 1.5x amount of ram) for your pagefile seriously cuts down on issues in my experience

7/15/2006 6:49:59 PM

Wow! You didn't know you needed to resintall Windows ever so often? Get off the intraweb now please. kthx.

7/15/2006 7:56:26 PM

I've had this laptop since...November of 2004, I think? It's my primary system, and the only reason I ever had to reinstall Windows was because I had a hard drive failure. People who think that you have to periodically reinstall Windows don't know how to use their fucking computers.

OMG BIT ROT

7/15/2006 8:37:50 PM

i don't think i HAVE to, i choose to because after uninstalling all unnecessary programs, installing all available updates to OS and drivers, and running defrag it STILL doesn't run as smoothly as it does with a fresh install...it takes very little of my time as i've slipstreamed installation, so why not? if i'm doing something wrong, let me know what it is and i'll attempt to correct the issue

7/15/2006 8:40:17 PM

Quote :

"I've had this laptop since...November of 2004, I think? It's my primary system, and the only reason I ever had to reinstall Windows was because I had a hard drive failure. People who think that you have to periodically reinstall Windows don't know how to use their fucking computers."

There are some facts you just can't get around:

Programs do not always clean up after themselves whether in use or in uninstallation.
Drivers can become corrupted (the leading cause of windows installs becoming "broken" after viruses)
dll's can become corrupted.
Spyware and viruses can damage/corrupt the registry (this damage can persist after removal and is annoying to fix after the fact)

Claiming that these problems are always the result of someone's inability to use their computer correctly is just assinine. Sometimes they just happen. Over time, they happen to most people and the surest way to fix them is to reinstall the OS. Degredation due to sloppy 3rd party programs, network worms, spyware, etc. is as much a symptom of windows' popularity as it is the windows registry. It's not nescessarily PEBKAC.

7/15/2006 9:57:07 PM

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/08/04/xp

7/15/2006 10:10:34 PM

Quote :

"Claiming that these problems are always the result of someone's inability to use their computer correctly is just assinine. Sometimes they just happen. Over time, they happen to most people and the surest way to fix them is to reinstall the OS."

7/16/2006 11:18:05 AM

I'm a pretty advanced user and i try to make it a habit to reinstall or roll back to a ghost image every 6 months or so. There are more reasons to than I can put into a single post but since most of it has already been covered i'll just leave it at that.

7/16/2006 11:35:12 AM

it all depends on what you do with your computer
if you're an advanced user you're more likely to put your computer through alot of abuse

7/16/2006 1:39:56 PM

I don't think you guys get it.

disk defragmenter and disk clean up will fix everything.

7/16/2006 2:03:04 PM

^If you're NOT an advanced user you're going to put your computer through a_lot more abuse, just unknowingly.

7/16/2006 6:46:58 PM

^yup man speaks the truth

^^ I hope you're being sarcastic

7/16/2006 6:50:09 PM

read the first post in the thread, of course I was being sarcastic.

7/16/2006 7:24:23 PM