How many times do u re-format ur pc?

I was wonderin then, how many times a yr have u re-formatted ur pc's hd...

On average...is it oks to re-format once a year? ...even if there's no infections or problems noticed?

coz someone said to me that re-formatting can make and improve pc performance better and the system runs faster...how true iz it?

 

Typically I format once every 12-16 months.

It's OK to format as often as you wish, or as time allows.
For me, it depends on:
How many app.s have I installed/uninstalled over a given period.
Any noticeable system slowdowns or "wierd" problems occuring.

I believe so. I did it to an old legacy (Win 95) notebook, boot time is now more than twice as fast.
Depends on amount of crud on your machine.
In theory, re-formatted machine will perform as it did when new "out of the box".
For me, it is time.

 

Somewhere between 5 and 10 times a year i guess.

 

i usually format every month or two. its become second hand nature for me.

 

Myself I hate to re-format unless I am force to.You have to reinstall all your applications, updating all your software,etc. Maybe I am lazy.

That's why I have FDISR. I make a clean install offline, freeze the image and save it on a external drive. In case of major problems I am back in business in no time.

 

Years ago I used to format every week. Now once or twice a year...if needed.

 

every week......?
lodore

 

I can't believe I'm reading this. Am I out of the loop? Why would you reformat your pc unless you're recovering from a disaster? I reformatted once in 2004 because I had a major problem and tech support made me.

 

i havent formated for 2 years.
i try to put it off and dont do it unless i need to.
also i cant go to my thread and see why...
aka no windows cd
lodore

 

I shouldn't say this because it's bad luck, but I think if you don't tweak the crap out of your pc and just let do its thing, and follow the rules, you shouldn't have any big problems. That along with regular maintainance like hd cleanup, diskcheck, defrag, regular registry clean up as much as you dare, and keeping the bugs out, a re-format should never be needed as a rule. Of course sh** happens too.

 

I have never ever ever reformatted in yeah years......why would anyone want to unless of course you had total meltdown.....what's the point otherwise?....Too much like hard work if you ask me......and I think it's all in the imagination that your OS runs better

But apart from that I haven't any Discs to do it with even if wanted.....lodore and me are in the same Computer Rowing boat.....


Cochise.....Discless in Disneyland.....

 

If it aint broken improve it

 

LOL - if you haven't reformatted in years and you don't have the disks ----- well how would you know if there are any benefits ?

why would anyone want to reformat ?-- speed and stability. Unless you never install any new programs which you don't later remove your machine will become measurably slower over time.

Reformating used to be a pain and took hours. Today I compromise and with each new machine I make a system image and more images as I build the system. Every 6 months or so switching back to an earlier image allows a quicker rebuild.

I removed Avast from a laptop a few weeks ago and its badly behaved uninstall created problems. Previously I would have either (a) lived with the problem or (b) reformated. Now all I had to do was go back to the image before avast was installed and rebuild from there - saved hours.

 

Haven't reformated or reinstalled in 6 years. Don't see a reason to. I create an image every month and do nightly backups.

It has been running great so I don't deam it necessary to reformat.

 

every season .

 

The last time I reformatted was Sep 11, 2003. That's 3 years and 4 months ago. I install and uninstall a lot of software. The key for me is keeping the registry clean. I use a combination of 2 programs for this.

Ultrawincleaner 2002 Version This program is similiar to Crapcleaner.

Regseeker, the free version This program allows me to scan the registry, and remove files manually that Ultrawincleaner may have missed.

The main software I use for Backup is Winrescue You can find it Here If you click on the link in my signature entitled " Disaster Prevention You will learn how winrescue works. Winrescue is the one program that I wouldn't be without. It has gotten me out of a lot of Jams.

I did notice a slight slowdown in my computer last week. Here's how I fixed the situation. I have a small 30 gb hardrive. I had about 14 gb of audio files accumulated. I burned every audio file to cd that I wanted to keep. Then I deleted all the audio files off the hardrive. I also had several software programs installed that I never use. I also uninstalled all those programs. I ran my registry cleaners..then ran scandisk. Now the computer is running great.

Reformatting for me is to much trouble. As long as my computer is running good. I won't be reformatting.

 

I format at least once per month, ussually once per 1-2 weeks.
I did about 50 formats due to playing with nLite and 20 due to vLite.
I like, that can instal and set up everything within an hour to be done.
I would never use an image backup, because it backups old soft, errors.

 

Only reformat when I change drives or configuration (like when my OS drive died last year).

 

Hello,
No need to reformat too much - testing is done on special dedicated machines and virtual machines. Real hardware - once 2-3 years. Testbeds - once a month. Virtual machines - 3-4 times a month.
Mrk

 

If reformatting means literally starting over from the OS disk, that's been years.
If re-imaging to an earlier backup is counted as reformatting, I do this quite often. Usually after trying a new app or something similar. The last time was from working thru a selection of USB drivers, finding ones that worked well on my old box. I did re-partition my internal drives last fall and changed the layout around to accomodate Linux and replace an older HD that was going bad, but still used images of the same setup I was using.
I've never had to reformat or re-image because of infection or performance slowdown. All the locations (cache, temp files, etc) excess files turn up in are cleaned daily by Eraser as scheduled tasks. My registry gets replaced every time I reboot so there's no excess building up there. If anything, the last changes I made have made this old box a bit faster yet.
Rick

 

what do you use ?

 

Sounds to me like it would have been even simpler for you if you had just used 'Restore'......

Cochise.....

 

LOL - Yes anyone who uses "Restore" could be called Simple - its one of the first
things I remove from any new pc installation - completely unreliable and poor even by Microsoft standards.

 

Yup I was a format freak. Just loved to do it. Now? Haha no way, only if I have to.