How often do you clean install Windows?

How often do you perform a fresh install?

  • On a schedule

    Votes: 2 3.3%

  • Major hardware change or new computer

    Votes: 17 28.3%

  • Never unless broken

    Votes: 37 61.7%

  • Major OS revisions. Windows 10 > 11

    Votes: 1 1.7%

  • Other

    Votes: 3 5.0%
  • Total voters
    60
ochadd

ochadd

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 9, 2008
Messages
1,422
There's something to be said for wiping and starting clean but I dread it. When do you do it?
 
when i cant actually fix the problem. the install im on at home is an upgrade from 7>8/8.1>10>11, all on beta/insider, and have been back and forth between intel and amd half a dozen times. it feels exactly the same as a fresh install on the same machine....
 
pendragon1 said:
when i cant actually fix the problem. the install im on at home is an upgrade from 7>8/8.1>10>11, all on beta/insider, and have been back and forth between intel and amd half a dozen times. it feels exactly the same as a fresh install on the same machine....
Click to expand...
My home Win 11 machine is a rattletrap these days. Too close to a complete overhaul to mess with it anymore. Rebooting while gaming, won't sleep, hardware installs during reboot. Tried many things to fix but I'd rather use it broken until replaced now. Then I'll wipe and see if that does the trick.
 
I too dread it...I don't do it unless it is broken. Although, I remember back in the win95 days, I did it probably every six-ish weeks and had it down to a science.

All that said, I really need to on my main system. It has been years and several motherboards and processors, etc.
 
If there is nothing wrong, I usually just don't. However, if something weird crops up I give it a day or so to try and fix it. If I can't, out comes in the install USB and it gets wiped.

I'll never understand people that go for weeks trying to fix problems when you can be back up with a fresh OS in 20 minutes.
 
criccio said:
Poor preparation and data storage practices, in most cases.
Click to expand...

Nah, it's the little things, like getting all the file type associations set up again, recreating your PowerToys settings, remembering your personal power profiles, and then stuff like opening a file and realizing you forgot to install 7z.

God forbid you're still playing Skyrim and you have 190 mods to re-install...
 
I could have picked both Major Hardware change New Computer or Never unless broken fortunately the latter comes more often which is why I picked it.
 
I normally did it once a year. I rarely even power up my PC anymore. I just use my laptop for everything.
 
pendragon1 said:
some times it takes weeks to get it all back to where it was....
Click to expand...
Installing Windows is the easy part. Configuring Windows is a bit of a pain, but manageable. Installing all my programs, and then configuring them, that's hard, boring, and frustrating. A waste of at least 2-3 days. While my wife hears me using words that she is glad I didn't use on front of the kids when they were young. I looked into NiNite, but it is too limiting. Doesn't do MS Office, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Norton Security (please let's not get into that issue), not my Firefox add-ins, not even a lot of my favorite utilities like GoodSync and Beyond Compare. So yeah I don't like to do a clean install, until I'm absolutely desperate And then I still procrastinate .
 
never did despite a major hardware change (amd4 to am5) and I went the vista->7->8->10 without ever doing a fresh install before that I think.

It is probably "freeing" to both setup for that case and being used to do it, as mentionned above in case of major issue, just try a format and install to see if it fix it, stuff like
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\PowerToys
and many others can be backuped and resetuper, you could have YAML file with all your application and call a
before a format: winget export -o packages.yaml
then: winget import -i path\to\your\packages.yaml

Steam and other launcher made all the gaming part easy (setting-save game-game themselve) to all reinstall, if you have unlimited and fast internet that really not an issue usually if your are not thinkered with mods and .ini files and what not.

Git is quite fast, but when you start having a bit of legacy in your setup (old visual studio C++ build and so on), there can be an will the latest version of something complain about it now....

That said part of the appeal would be too not have stuff you ended up not needing anymore, so there can be value to not reinstall everything that was installed and just do it as you really need, maybe just have a yaml with the classics 7zip and what not.
 
My old Ryzen 5800X setup that I sold last year had the OS installed in August of 2009 with Windows 7 Professional.
I think it started as an i7 870, then an i7 2600k, i7 3770k, i7 4790k, then the Ryzen 5800X.
 
LukeTbk said:
It is probably "freeing" to both setup for that case and being used to do it, as mentionned above in case of major issue, just try a format and install to see if it fix it, stuff like
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\PowerToys
and many others can be backuped and resetuper, you could have YAML file with all your application and call a
before a format: winget export -o packages.yaml
then: winget import -i path\to\your\packages.yaml
Click to expand...

OK. I am a complete YAML noob. Can you post an example of a YAML file. What does export and import do? Can import automagically install a program and configure it?

Can you create a batch file with the winget export or import commands?

LukeTbk said:
Steam and other launcher made all the gaming part easy (setting-save game-game themselve) to all reinstall, if you have unlimited and fast internet that really not an issue usually if your are not thinkered with mods and .ini files and what not.

Git is quite fast, but when you start having a bit of legacy in your setup (old visual studio C++ build and so on), there can be an will the latest version of something complain about it now....
Click to expand...

LukeTbk said:
That said part of the appeal would be too not have stuff you ended up not needing anymore,
Click to expand...

That's good, because we all accumulate lots of cruft after a few years.
LukeTbk said:
so there can be value to not reinstall everything that was installed and just do it as you really need,
Click to expand...
Please explain further.

LukeTbk said:
maybe just have a yaml with the classics 7zip and what not.
Click to expand...
 
yaml (or json) will be a simple file that will have:

for an example
https://github.com/svrooij/dotfiles-windows/blob/main/components/03-winget-packages.json

JSON: 
"Sources" :
    [
        {
            "Packages" :
            [
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "7zip.7zip"
                },
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "CPUID.HWMonitor"
                },
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "Valve.Steam"
                },
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "Ubisoft.Connect"
                },

etc...
if you run winget import with that file (with some options like --accept-package-agreements, they will all install in a row.

you can look at this example of someone that install all the apps on his windows to another Windows device, the idea would be similar if you want to reinstall all your current application (for those that winget support at least):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRUz4-4mC9Y

philb2 said:
Please explain further.
Click to expand...
One appeal to me for a clean install would be to end up with less things on the machine and a better folder-drives organizations, if I really back up everything and reinstall everything I would end up at the same place.
 
Axman said:
Nah, it's the little things, like getting all the file type associations set up again, recreating your PowerToys settings, remembering your personal power profiles, and then stuff like opening a file and realizing you forgot to install 7z.

God forbid you're still playing Skyrim and you have 190 mods to re-install...
Click to expand...
You can image your drive and restore it in the case of disk loss.
 
LukeTbk said:
yaml (or json) will be a simple file that will have:

for an example
https://github.com/svrooij/dotfiles-windows/blob/main/components/03-winget-packages.json

JSON: 
"Sources" :
    [
        {
            "Packages" :
            [
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "7zip.7zip"
                },
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "CPUID.HWMonitor"
                },
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "Valve.Steam"
                },
                {
                    "PackageIdentifier" : "Ubisoft.Connect"
                },

etc...
if you run winget import with that file (with some options like --accept-package-agreements, they will all install in a row.
Click to expand...
For me, that would be a dream. I manage 4 systems in my LAN. I could see creating a "master" file that I keep current based on installs on all systems, and then editing it for specific systems. A great way to keep a common set of utilities and programs across all systems. And makes me more willing to do a clean install,
 
For me it's usually around once per year. I went through a period where I didn't have to for something like 3-4 years, but things have been more finicky lately. You get what you pay for, right Microsoft?

Usually image backups keep me from needing to totally reinstall, but sometimes you'll fire up an image and it's busted, too. On the plus side, it's never been easier to start over. I keep a list of programs I use and re-downloading/installing them all only takes an hour or two. You can backup Steam by just copying the entire folder to another drive and then copying it back. Adobe CC and MSOffice automate their processes and they remember your preferences. Back in the days of 98, Me, 2000, XP, etc. I'd still be installing and configuring my OS 2-3 days later. Now I'm typically 100% good to go in a few hours. That's with a pile of games and quite a few specialized programs. With the computers I configure for work, I'm totally finished in like 45 minutes.
 
On my own system: Never.

The idea that you need to reinstall an OS at regular intervals boggles my brain, I haven't had the need to do such a thing since Windows 98.
 
Never unless broken.

Home PC went from fresh install of Windows 7 on P67/i7-2600k build, then to Windows 10 via in-place upgrade, then to X470/3900X, then to X570/5900X.

Work PC was the same OS route but with different hardware.

Have some programs that are a bitch to Activate now, so re-installing is the last thing I want to do. And screw all this Cloud/Subscription based crap for software.
 
I used to obsessively clean install windows 2000/XP/Vista any where from 1 day to 6 weeks -- it was a sickness lol. With my current Win 10 install I think it's been almost 4-5 years.
 
I think windows collects bloat from bad installers and whatnot - especially from programs that wrap around driver installations. It's gotten better over the years, but once every year or so seems to make things snappy again. This is where I appreciate how things get more "containerized" in other operating systems.
 
applegrcoug said:
I too dread it...I don't do it unless it is broken. Although, I remember back in the win95 days, I did it probably every six-ish weeks and had it down to a science.

All that said, I really need to on my main system. It has been years and several motherboards and processors, etc.
Click to expand...

Back when I was trying to find a stable set of drivers for my AMD K6 platform, I kept a small hard drive with just the OS on it as a source drive / emergency drive.

I didn't have any drive cloning software available to me at the time, and when a "new" driver basically "broke" the Windows 98 system (trying to get a Matrox G200 stably working with a VIA MVP3 chipset was a hassle).

In those cases, I'd boot from a floppy, using the source drive as C:, do a quick format /s of the corrupted drive, and do the command of:

xcopy *.* /r /i /c /h /k /e /y d:\

It would take about 10 minutes to complete, and on the following boot, the swap file had to be regenerated, but it gave me a good clone each time, and as an added bonus, the files were completely contiguous, as if I had just run a full defragmentation.


These days? I don't reinstall the OS, unless going to the next step, or if I do a significant hardware upgrade (motherboard with different chipset). The last time I did a Windows 11 reinstall was after buying a Ryzen 9 5900x, 64 GB of memory, and B550 motherboard from a fellow forum member (thanks, dbwillis!), and that was almost two years ago.

Even after that, when I moved my previous Ryzen 5 2600X guts to my work PC and wanted to switch from a 4 TB mechanical HD to a 1 TB SSD, Macrium's software did a perfect cloning job.

My Windows systems are remarkably stable, and software-based crashes are far and few in between.
 
I frequently reinstall. My main desktop normally runs esxi so a multitude of os normally comes with that.

I use the "trial" for windows 2022 server. It so much better then win 10 or 11. It's exactly what you expect windows to be without all the nonsense.

I normally don't have to nuke my windows vms after breaking them. But Linux os don't last long with me. My solution to many Linux issues is nuke the os and try a different distro
 
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