Format every x year(s)/months vs. good maintenance techniques

Hi,
I was curious as to personal opinions regarding reformatting versus not (i.e. regular maintenance only needed).
I have seen a few schools of thought on this. There are those that claim a good reformatting and reinstalling o/s and apps is a good thing to do occasionally; and of course restoring data from the backup you always perform ;) .
This was something regarding this subject I read years ago and it seemed to make sense.

However I saw that some people scoff at this and say reformatting is not necessary if one truly knows what they are doing (cleaning temps, scandisk, defrag, properly uninstalling programs, keeping registy clean). I would have to go back to some NG archives but some these people were MVPs and they tended to almost make it seem that the only person that needs to reformat is one that doesn't know how to maintain thier system.

So what is your take on this? If you believe in reformat roughly how often although I know that is a loaded question.
If you believe that reformat is unnecessary what are your maintenance practices to keep machine optimal (driver update check, defrag, etc.)?


Have a Great Day,
D

If you constantly install and uninstall stuff, you are bound to get something messed up somewhere. That's just a fact of a multitasking operating system that uses shared files between different programs.

I personally haven't had to format in about a year the main thing I try to do after installing or uninstalling anything, is running Regclean and windows clean up, and eveytime I get off the internet I do a clean up of all temo internet files.
So for me it has been working.But I'm sure in the near future I will be formatting.

Each of my personal boxes gets a reformat/re-install every 6 months. I have done it that way for years.

I agree with Mac. Lots of programs like to share .dll's and system files.

I install/uninstall tons of stuff and always feel better about the machines after a clean install. They always bench a little better as well.

My personal machines just get reghosted everytime I **** them up. I'm always messing about with stuff so with all the best preventitive maintainance in the world, sooner or later they'll slow down or just stop working. Only takes 1/2 hour compared to spending that every week crawling through the registry, or about 3 days for a full reinstall.

I'm a firm believer in a reformat and reinstall every 6 months or so. It's spring cleaning for my PC.

It also helps me trim the list of programs installed because when I am spending a day inserting game and application CD-ROMS, I really think about how much I use them and some don't get reinstalled.

I'm eventually going to move to the system I use for PC's I build for people which puts a ghost image on a seperate disk or partition with contents of my documents, Outlook express emails, MP3's, and JPEG's. A restore of the ghost image only kills the favorites, which are easy to back up before hand.

I pretty much rebuild my pc about every 6 months. I mess around with it a lot and am constantly uninstalling and installing things. I just recently went through the great format of 2001. (never rebuild when angry) Forgot bunch of data that is all bye bye now. Oh well nothing irreplaceable.

Agreed.
Format/Reload semi-annually or more frequently if system acts squirerly.

It's been about a year since I've formated and reinstalled. I used to do it about every 6 months or so and then now, when I think that I'll do it one afternoon, something always comes up and then I put it off and just keep putting it off and it never gets done. I can tell now that I need to do something because during the past few months, I have greatly noticed my machine slowing down and Windows taking longer to come up and whatever and several strange things beginning to take place.

If anyone wants to come do it for me for free, I'll be glad to let you. :D

BTW- Happy birthday to me! :cool:

The power users on my network actually need their PCs re-imaged less often (due to more diligent use of scandisk, defrag, registry repair and other maintenance)than the rank and file users with the 3 or 4 application, "cookie cutter" setup. They are the ones who foul their nests especially with all the unnecessary downloaded trash and unintended spyware that comes with it. Whenever a rank and file user leaves our company, I just reimage the PC then, rather than try to clean up the mess they leave.

Happy Birthday flyboy!

I used to reformat and reinstall about once or twice a year. But since I've been using XP Home Ed., my system is sooooo stable, and runs so nicely, and everything is soooo clean and very manageable, and I just don't feel that I have a need to do that anymore. This is truly the best MS OS I've ever used IMO.

I do regular, thorough maintenance and registry cleaning, and I do uninstalls as cleanly and thoroughly as I can. Still, my husband shares the PC with me, and his wanton usage of it makes me feel the need for a reformat every year and a half or so.

i upgrade my main system so often that good maintenance is all i need,
clauded

I use to re-format every 6 mos or sooner if i messed it up by playing around, I got tired of plugging cd's for 8 or so hours, so I loaded everything I use all updates and did a ghost image burnt to 5 cd's (5.5g or so), so now any little thing goes wrong 35 mins iam back to square one, from there its just a matter of adding a couple of new apps. :-Þ

Cheers

I do Both, Clean and reinstall. I clean most of the time and reinstall some of the time when I fell like I can't clean anymore, especially when the computer gets really draggy and stuff.
But most of the time after I reinstall everything, it's back to almost before I reformated except it runs a little better.

Lets see, I go into the registry, delete unwanted, scan it with some spyware registry cleaner, then uninstall it, and remove it completely, gone, poof, natta. Scandisk, Defrag you know the rest.
:p gotta be clean, organize, messy but simple.

I agree with Renee.

I keep a close eye on what I install on my desktop, so things stay pretty clean there...

However my wife and kids use it too, and I end up upgrading or making major changes every 1-2 years, so that ends up being a reinstall.

For my servers, however, I don't make many changes at all on them, and when I do, it is very controlled, so I never need to format/reinstall...

I am definately a fan of reformatting over trying to clean it up. I reformat every so often, not regularly but whenever a pc gets screwed up or a new OS comes out. When a new OS comes out I pick the pc with in the worst shape software wise and put it on that to try. On the flip side my boss is a die hard fan of scandisk, regclean, and defrag. The LAN admin and I break his stones all the time because he's been a programmer for 20 years and knows very little about pc's. He tries to make people think he's a tech. He's still very micromanaging though and makes us do these maintenence things before doing other fixes that the LAN admin and I think would be more effective. There is nothing like a nice clean format. I would compare it to getting new carpet on your floor instead of trying to shampoo the rug after you've just raised a child for a few years who likes to throw food.

Hmmm...

An interesting topic indeed!

I keep a Ghost image of the base OS load for all of my machines. When I muck things up, it's only a few hours until the machine is back to where it is.

Most of my data is stored on my NT 4.0 server and that gets backed up to tape weekly, so I try to minimize the potential damage from having a machine go south on me!

I scandisk/defrag on the first of each month, update AV sigs weekly and manually scan all files w/hueristics bi-weekly.

I have been lucky (knock on wood {my head}) and have not had a machine crap out on me in years...

Kenny P.

Regclean? Whats that??? :-p

Format, ghost reload, and copy from backups. Downtime = 30 minutes

For me it depends on time. I takes me less time to backup my data files and favorites and reformat the systems then to sit there and uninstall, regclean and then defrag.

I do this about every six months.

My two cents

I format and reinstall every few monthsor when I change mother boards
I have two physical drives so I may ghose my OS over to the secondary drive just in case I wreck my OS really good, I may do a reinstall after I figure out which drivers work best for me so my registry is clean
I use Speed disk to defrag, I also clean out the temp folder and the temp internet folder

once every 6 months or so
Of course i Have a Ghost Image with os and some application so the pill is not so bad.
I backup my personal Data Every week into Zip Drive so I really have something like 3 hours of work.

I will only format if need be
It has been 3 years...Never removed any program off the drive...When it starts to slow down I just upgrade...Expensive but I stay current...
I have only once defrag the drive...Machine works excellent...I like to clean the reg manually So I know what's going on with windows...

I do a lot of software testing and integration on most of my machines. Therefore I intentionally do things to my machines that corrupt the OS, forcing me to reformat at least one machine a month. I use Ghost 7 to make the process easier and quicker.

I generaly only reformat when doing a comlete system rebuild. (New proc., MB) for minor upgrades I leave it alone, good basic maint is all you need. about a year ago I upgraded from an Abit BE6r2 to an Abit BX-133 RAID didn't get around to new drives and setting up the RAID fro a couple months. And since th Raid controller was the only major difference in the boards I didn't bother with a format and reinstall. All totall it went prob'ly 18 mo without a format, and the drive never showed that it was even 1% fragmented. Still running perfectly when I set up the RAID, and I have no doubt that it would be today. Good maintainance is just common sense. If you never change the oil in your car you will be overhauling it fairly frequently.

I do a clean reformat whenever I have 'TIME'. If I have a good 3-4 day weekend and just nothing to do, ill probably reformat (unless i did it a few weeks ago). Im a big fan of reformatting, and I always back things that are non-downloadable to my mac. The mac never dies and never needs a reformat, so its great. Yes I have a mac. Bite me if you think macs suck.