The inevitable format and reinstall

[Plork]

Well, I just had enough last night and couldn't figure out what was causing stuttering in all my games. I work in IT and ya know, sometimes you just gotta wipe the PC and start fresh. Usually I like to do this to my gaming rig about once a year but I think it's been over 2 since I've done it to this comp (it's a 3 1/2 year old computer for the most part aside from upgrades and what not). So after getting the essentials reinstalled (steam, TF2, some drivers, etc) I fired up a little TF2 and of course it's screaming at higher settings than I had it before the format.

Thank goodness for the external hard drive I rarely use to bump stuff over to and not lose it. i really need to invest in a bigger second hard drive. I'm not a big fan on partitioning since I figure when I have to format and reinstall I'll have to deal with so many stupid programs, that's usually where most of my time gets wasted.

So how long has it been since you reformatted?

 

[Not-Z]

Have not reformatted in over 2 years since I've built the rig.

On the other hand, I had to reformat my external drive twice (losing around 500gigs of data each time) which has pissed me off.

Much as we've "advanced" in the field of technology, it's amazing to see things "break" yet all we need is a restart or reformat. In short term, it's retarded.

 

[Plork]

hehehe. You know, on the bright side since I see so many PC's that are just completely screwed by end users not knowing what they are doing i'm used to reformatting and have it down to a pretty quick process including all the installations needed after windows is on fresh. I haven't had to touch my spare laptop which I take with me out on calls in over 3 years. considering the nasty infected networks that thing has been connected to it still amazes me that it's running fast and clean.

 

[blizbiggy]

Depends... Here recently, I have been testing windows 7 beta, and they will soon release windows 7 RC 1 in about 1/2 a year, so will prob be about 1/2 a year before i format again

 

[Atten]

The last time I reformatted was... last weekend. Lately I've been averaging about once a week, although that's a bit extreme, even for me.

Over the past 3 years or so, I've averaged a format every 5-6 weeks. I just can't stand a slow
computer.

I threw in an old 120Gb IDE hard drive to back up my more important stuff.

 

[Foxhound]

The last time I reformatted was... last weekend. Lately I've been averaging about once a week, although that's a bit extreme, even for me.

Over the past 3 years or so, I've averaged a format every 5-6 weeks. I just can't stand a slow
computer.

I threw in an old 120Gb IDE hard drive to back up my more important stuff.

Once a week?! That sounds like too much.

 

[m e z z o]

I format probably every few months.

 

[Existence.]

I format probably every 3 weeks. Unfortunately, I love beta-testing all the new OSes (Ubuntu, Windows 7, various other Linux distros) which causes my computer to fail quite constantly. I actually managed to fry my HDD a few days ago. I just sent it in to Seagate, hopefully I can get another one.

 

[Mustachio]

Personally I do the good ol format and reinstall every 6 months to a year... i think at one point though I didnt do it though for a good 2 years... think im at about 3-4 months right now and everything is running smooth for the most part. Hopefully ill be able to hold out on my next reformat for another 6 months or so... or until windows 7 hits officially.