On Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:10:36 +0000, Lead3 wrote:
Techies, IT Admins, Hackers, programmers all say the same thing: you should do a complete clean install of Windows every 6 to 9 months. If you don't, you will notice your system gets sluggish.
This is untrue. None of the "Techies, IT Admins, programmers" I know recommend a complete clean install of Windows every 6 to 9 months.
I have systems that have been running for years and they are not sluggish nor in any way problematic.
Ditto. I'm a "techie," and I used to be a programmer. My
recommendation is to never reinstall unless there is some problem that
you have been unable to fix any other way.
In my view, it's usually a mistake. With a modicum of care, it should
never be necessary to reinstall Windows (any version). I've run
Windows 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, WFWG 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98,
Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and now
Windows 8.1, each for the period of time before the next version came
out, and each on two or more machines here. I never reinstalled any of
them (with a single exception--a problem that I worked on for weeks
unsuccessfully), and I have never had anything more than an occasional
minor problem.
It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).
But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates, you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for
your system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work
the way you're comfortable with.
Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: do you have or can you find all the
drivers you need? can you find all your application CDs? Can you find
all the needed installation codes? Do you have data backups to
restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and tweaks you
may have installed to make everything work the way you like?
Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve that
Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.
And perhaps most important: if you reformat and reinstall without
finding out what caused your problem, you will very likely repeat the
behavior that caused it, and quickly find yourself back in exactly the
same situation.