are you supposed to reformat from time to time?

[matchless]

as all my mates say yes it speeds things up a again, but I have had this PC for 4 Years now and it's heavilly used but seems as fast as it ever was

what are you thoughts?

[RobDickinson]

Its not use, that can be sorted by a defrag.

Its all the bunkum that goes with installing/uninstalling junk, registry settings, dll's, drivers , small tray apps, background tasks etc, if you havnt messed about much and it runs fine then dont do anything.

[mcflurry]

If it ain't broke and all that...

[FunkyNige]

Used to be the case with Windows 98(it degraded over time), with XP there's no need.

[matchless]

thank you

[Muncher]

I still reformat every year or so, but I don't think XP has actually slowed down over time much, if at all. Microsoft seem to have got their act together lately.

It does depend on the user though, my Uncle's PC which I look after slows down massively with the abuse it gets from his kids so that is reformatted every 6 months or so.

The next time I reformat will probably be to install Windows Vista.

[neil.b]

What is this reformat you speak of?

OK, I'm joking, its only a few years since I switch to Macs; i still remember....

[agent006]

neil.b said:

OK, I'm joking, its only a few years since I switch to Macs; i still remember....

Oddly enough, i've had to flatten and reintall my mac far more times in the last year than my PCs.

[neil_cardiff]

Think of it like a car.

If you don't maintain it and look after it, you'll be having an engine rebuild after a while. However, even if you do look after it, after several hundreds of thousands of miles - i.e. a few years in PC OS life) you'll still need to rebuild the engine.

Backup your data and rebuild your pc - the difference on a year old machine can be staggering especially if you have installed and uninstalled lots of applications over time...

I frequently rebuild my personal work pc, home pc, and laptop - keeps me tidy and always leaves me with a speedy machine. Additionally it takes me 45 minutes to hose, rebuild and get working again

[malman]

Have you sat down and worked out if the speedier pc saves you 45 minutes worth of time between rebuilds if it doesn't your wasting your time

[zumbruk]

neil_cardiff said:

Think of it like a car. If you don't maintain it and look after it, you'll be having an engine rebuild after a while. However, even if you do look after it, after several hundreds of thousands of miles - i.e. a few years in PC OS life)

I think you mean "Windows", not "PC OS" generally. I've never, ever, re-installed a Unix based machine for performance reasons. Or, indeed, any reason other than major hardware or software upgrades. Hell, I never reboot, much less re-install. The "restart, reboot, reinstall" paradigm for problem-solving is purely an MS one.

[neil_cardiff]

zumbruk said:

neil_cardiff said: Think of it like a car. If you don't maintain it and look after it, you'll be having an engine rebuild after a while. However, even if you do look after it, after several hundreds of thousands of miles - i.e. a few years in PC OS life) I think you mean "Windows", not "PC OS" generally. I've never, ever, re-installed a Unix based machine for performance reasons. Or, indeed, any reason other than major hardware or software upgrades. Hell, I never reboot, much less re-install. The "restart, reboot, reinstall" paradigm for problem-solving is purely an MS one.

Fair enough, but then 99% of users here will be using Windows - and if they are running Unix or Linux, then they'll know the answer the above anyway...

[Plotloss]

Pah reformat...

Since build in 2001 my machine has been on 24/7 and is used daily for up to 16 hours.

Its running XP Pro and has never needed any maintenance on any component.

Granted weekly it gets defragged and I have a place for everything and everything in its place but even if you didnt do that I dont see why reformatting over a given time scale is actually neccesary.

The only thing it does do is gets slower on boot but thats due to that bloody Prefetch directory and clearing that out occasionally makes it like first install all over again.

[zumbruk]

neil_cardiff said:

zumbruk said: neil_cardiff said: Think of it like a car. If you don't maintain it and look after it, you'll be having an engine rebuild after a while. However, even if you do look after it, after several hundreds of thousands of miles - i.e. a few years in PC OS life) I think you mean "Windows", not "PC OS" generally. I've never, ever, re-installed a Unix based machine for performance reasons. Or, indeed, any reason other than major hardware or software upgrades. Hell, I never reboot, much less re-install. The "restart, reboot, reinstall" paradigm for problem-solving is purely an MS one. Fair enough, but then 99% of users here will be using Windows - and if they are running Unix or Linux, then they'll know the answer the above anyway...

[Jnr]

Plotloss said:

The only thing it does do is gets slower on boot but thats due to that bloody Prefetch directory and clearing that out occasionally makes it like first install all over again.

My XP Pro Laptop has slowed down considerably on boot up over the last 12 months, can deleting the entries in the prefetch directory be done with no ill effects and if so is it worth doing on a regular basis???


Jnr

[Zod]

neil.b said:

What is this reformat you speak of? OK, I'm joking, its only a few years since I switch to Macs; i still remember....

If you'd switched to Windows 2000 or XP at the same time, you would have forgotten. Mac OS9 wasn't exactly a trouble-free wonder, you know.

[Zod]

zumbruk said:

neil_cardiff said: Think of it like a car. If you don't maintain it and look after it, you'll be having an engine rebuild after a while. However, even if you do look after it, after several hundreds of thousands of miles - i.e. a few years in PC OS life) I think you mean "Windows", not "PC OS" generally. I've never, ever, re-installed a Unix based machine for performance reasons. Or, indeed, any reason other than major hardware or software upgrades. Hell, I never reboot, much less re-install. The "restart, reboot, reinstall" paradigm for problem-solving is purely an MS one.

I have bolloxed almost every Linux install I've ever done at some point through a problematic video driver or something similar. Are you saying you run real Unix, not just Lunix at home???

[Zod]

I haven't reinstalled Windows XP or Server 2003 on any of my machines. One has been running the same install of XP since the final release came out on MSDN in September 2001.

[bigdods]

Reformatting only solves speed problems because you are reinstalling XP without all the baggage that collects over time. Defragging makes no real difference now with modern high speed hard disks and caches - I did my first defrag in 12 months the other day across 1Terabyte of storage and the result ? No discernable difference and all the disks were (according to windows) severely fragmented.

The best bet is to run ccleaner - does the job of an XP rebuild in just a few minutes and its free :-)

[zumbruk]

Zod said:

zumbruk said: neil_cardiff said: Think of it like a car. If you don't maintain it and look after it, you'll be having an engine rebuild after a while. However, even if you do look after it, after several hundreds of thousands of miles - i.e. a few years in PC OS life) I think you mean "Windows", not "PC OS" generally. I've never, ever, re-installed a Unix based machine for performance reasons. Or, indeed, any reason other than major hardware or software upgrades. Hell, I never reboot, much less re-install. The "restart, reboot, reinstall" paradigm for problem-solving is purely an MS one. I have bolloxed almost every Linux install I've ever done at some point through a problematic video driver or something similar.

I can say exactly the same about Windows installs. I generally have to do them 3 or 4 times before I get what I want. That rather indicates that the problem is lack of familiarity, not the crapness of the installer(s).

Zod said:

Are you saying you run real Unix, not just Lunix at home???

I'm responsible for some 1700 servers at work running Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Red Hat and Suse. At home I run mainly Solaris (the box I'm typing this on is a Sun Ultra 60 running Solaris 10) and Red Hat. We (well, my wife) have a Windows XP machine, but I think I've reached the point where I can out that - the one remaining app I needed under Windows was Lotus Notes, but that appears to run OK under Wine.