How often do you (re)install your OS?

[Darmok N Jalad]

Just curious how long folks go between OS installs, and I'm interested in the discussion that evolves. Back in college, I think I reinstalled Windows every week, often because I'd alternate between versions quite a bit (95/98, NT4, Me, 2K...yeah, I'm old). These days, my aim for OS configs is to "set it and forget it" and see how long I can go without breaking it.

I jumped to an Arch-based distro earlier this year, Manjaro, and ye ol' command line says it was installed on May 22, 2024, so 5 months in with no trouble, so far. My only urge to reinstall at this point is to put it on a far newer drive than a 128GB SATA SSD (testing evolved into production, lol), but I also have an NVME secondary drive that handles much of the heavy lifting, so I haven't really felt the need yet.

 

[ty_ger]

I try not to. My computer use is very repititive. I start with something simple and then try not to change or test much. I probably reinstall every few years for one reason or another.

 

[QuietBob]

This is from my main Win7 machine, which I use daily. It takes quite a long time to boot now (about 70 seconds), but I don't feel like re-installing everything because otherwise it works fine.

In general, I only re-install the system when it can't boot even after extended troubleshooting. Or when jumping to the next major OS version.

 

[johnspack]

Heh, probably several times a year. Of course I have multiple installs on multiple ssds ready to go at all times. My current Arch install has lasted for months now though, by far the
most stable os I've run.

 

[evernessince]

I haven't had to re-install my OS since first installing windows 10 with a 5820K years and years back.

Been through 5 platform changes and benchmark scores of all components match what reviewers get and have zero stability issues. I do uninstall old platform drivers before upgrading.

Revo uninstaller does a great job of keeping the file system and registry clean as well.

Re-installing an OS can be a PITA, particularly if you have a lot of software and customization that can't easily be scripted to install silently either during OS installation or after.

Prior to windows 10 I used to re-install frequently but it was just too much work so I just stopped doing that and making more of my apps into portable versions in case I do need to re-install.

 

[Bill_Bright]

How often do you (re)install your OS?

Never. I install once and that's it.

Back in college...

That's the problem, isn't it? Sadly, too often folks think because it was a common practice back in the day with W95, it must still be today. That is total nonsense! W7/10/11 are not W95 or even XP. People MUST stop thinking they need to treat them the same way.

Contrary to what some want us to believe, the developers at Microsoft are not stupid and have not been sitting on and spinning on their thumb the last 20 years.

 

[DaemonForce]

Tablet: Every 2-3 months or whenever it becomes genuinely unusable for watching streams or wireless display crashing out after use.
Workstation: Every 1-5 months or whenever Start Menu completely locks up, can't adjust time, can't call jumplists, etc. I've been there for a month.
Any time there are superfluous bullshit Windows Update stacks that completely hose IMEpad to the point I can no longer do proper kanji transforms, that's gotta go.
Stay off the main update rings. Win10 is done. Win11 isn't friendly to creators or artists, there's just no good answer to this noise other than staying on OLD Windows.

 

[unwind-protect]

Practically never. Even when I get a new machine I clone an existing install.

Some exceptions:

• When going from Intel Mac to M1 I started from a clean install so that I don't drag Intel code over
• My Windows gaming PC was kind of rotten in the install, and then I had an event that would have required restoring from backup. I have a new install now instead (not that this one works the way I want either...)
• For some virtual machines I just start from what is given in an image (not my own image). Other VMs are just copied

 

[Lew Zealand]

Like others here, I clone an existing install and replace drivers. No issues so far but if I have one, I'll just grab a different PC and clone that one. I did a fresh install of W11 on my Minisforum UM780 XTX as it's my W11 test PC and that'll probably be my clone source for W11 moving forward.

 

[Sithaer]

Almost never unless I upgrade/switch to a new platform or something really unexpected happens but thats very rare. 'had a conflicting AMD driver+Windows update in my RX 570 days that forced me to reinstall my OS basically..'

 

[Apocalypsee]

Pre-XP days I might install every other week like you, experimenting between OS's. WinME is the one that been reinstalled the most as it bluescreened a lot. Win2k is the stable one if I'm not mistaken.

Post XP I didn't reinstall. My current OS has been from Win7 era and cloned from HDD to SATA SSD and M.2 and jumped like 4 platform (from Bulldozer, to Haswell, and Zen1 to current Zen3)

 

[lexluthermiester]

As a rule, I do a fresh install every year(ish) or two depending on how janky the registry gets and how updates are going. Just recently did a fresh install on this very machine and it had been 18months since the last.

 

[GerKNG]

Last time was a couple hours ago. i have probably installed windows 25 times this year.
i often play around with things, overclock, crash 25 times, swap GPUs and then a week later windows starts to act up. (DDU, AMD GPU in System and windows update force downloads random NVidia drivers was the issue from today.)

and since i have a very simple system with everything personal incl. a folder with an installer for every software i use, installing windows from scratch to the point where it was like before takes less than 45 minutes.

 

[lexluthermiester]

WinME is the one that been reinstalled the most as it bluescreened a lot.

That didn't need a reinstall. It needed to have the WinME version of system restore disabled. It otherwise ran fine.

Last time was a couple hours ago. i have probably installed windows 25 times this year.

Seriously? What are you doing to your system that you need to reinstall so many times in less than a year?

 

[64K]

I haven't done an OS reinstall since the XP days where I would reinstall it on average about twice a year. Fear of picking up viruses was my reason back then. Since then I've never done a reinstall. Too much trouble.

 

[gurusmi]

Not too often. I own production systems that have to make money. Most systems are installed with Zorin OS (Linux). The windows system:

 

[Solaris17]

These days, my aim for OS configs is to "set it and forget it" and see how long I can go without breaking it.

Same, too old for that shit. I take whatever updates or build updates windows gives me.

For context though, I do run a WDS server with MDT and port as many of my applications I have time for too it. So for me its not a massive hassle to reinstall. I just dont want to.

 

[Klemc]

I'm fully ashamed by my own rythm after reading you all.

2 times since 2023-1, 22h2/23h2

 

[Marcus L]

2x yesterday!!! after only a fresh install of Win10 a few weeks ago.... long story...

Been wanting to ditch Windows 11 for a while now with all their telemetry and other fkwittery which is only increasing, but that's a different story. So decided to move back to Win10 a few weeks ago, no issues whatsoever, runs amazing... cut to yesterday, computer starts playing up last night, blinking "dash" symbal to the top left of an all black screen for about 10 seconds before it got to POST, spent an hour or two trying to find out what the problem was, reset BIOS settings, unplugged SATA drives (only NVME still connected) as Windows also started not booting and I started receiving a "POP OS" bootloader prompt that I had installed on a SATA SSD ages ago and have scrubbed the drive since but obviously there is still something in the MFT or some remnants of the Linux bootloader left behind somehow? so at this moment in time it's looking like something serious has shit the bed and I have a major HW fault, mobo/PSU/GPU??? took GPU out and blew the HSF out, same with the slot, reseated carefully, making sure all cables were plugged in tight, unplugged ATX 24pin and reseated, after an hour or so of copious amounts of swearing and hair pulling came across an article suggesting a USB device might be to blame...... I rarely use my ancient Samsung S3200 printer but needed to last week, kept the USB wire plugged in and literally had no issues before all this random stuff started last night, turns out that was the issue, removed the USB cable and the "dash" symbal POST problem disappeared and it is chugging along happily on yet ANOTHER clean Windows 10 install.... thankfully anything worth keeping is on my other drives, aside from drivers and some app installs I have all my stuff and even games installed on my other drives, it's a small saving grace at least!

Honestly now I remember how things used to be back in the Windows 98/XP days with random shit just happening with your PC for literally no reason and the amount of hours spent diagnosing and searching for and applying fixes, definitely don't miss that, though we look back on 98/XP with rose tinted glasses today and forget all the fk'ing around you had to do with your system back in those days

Have had this PC rock stable for 18-24mths now without a hitch, never BSOD, random crash, no instances of corrupt Windows installs etc, it literally just works flawlessly, so it was a major headache and "oh no" moment at the time and the reason I thought it must have been a HW issue, thankfully that doesn't look to be the case thanks for reading if you got this far and sorry for the ramble!

 

[harm9963]

Have a back up M.2 on other system , plus recovery drive , had a M.2 OS drop dead , other system was in sync with onedrive , easy fix, except had to buy a new m.2 , recovery drive works and reinstalled OS repair or go back , clean installed only if necessary ! last 4 years maybe one clean installed, , not likes years ago, that was a pain with floppy disk ,Windows XP 64 .

 

[Space Lynx]

I do a clean install once every 6 months or so, always been that way, no idea why (I think because I just find it satisfying do clean installs with the latest mobo BIOS and latest fresh drivers). It doesn't take me long to do it though, with nvme + ninite + fiber optic internet + I'm just a casual gamer, so all I have to do is backup my games to an offline hdd before i do it. If I was actually a normal user that did a lot of stuff on PC besides gaming, I'd probably cut that back to once every year or two years as the install time would be longer.

 

[Klemc]

I do a clean install once every 6 months or so, always been that way, no idea why (I think because I just find it satisfying do clean installs with the latest mobo BIOS and latest fresh drivers). It doesn't take me long to do it though, with nvme + ninite + fiber optic internet + I'm just a casual gamer, so all I have to do is backup my games to an offline hdd before i do it. If I was actually a normal user that did a lot of stuff on PC besides gaming, I'd probably cut that back to once every year or two years as the install time would be longer.

Use SyncBack to select the appdata mydocs....... folders so when you need backup it's fast & simple, and just have to be copy/paste when needed (reinstall OS).

 

[Space Lynx]

Use SyncBack to select the appdata mydocs....... folders so when you need backup it's fast & simple, and just have to be copy/paste when needed (reinstall OS).

I don't want anything backed up besides the game files and steam cloud save files, I really don't care about anything else. Also, if I play a Denuvo game or another DRM game, sometimes a clean install feels like having a nice shower.

 

[Klemc]

I don't want anything backed up besides the game files and steam cloud save files, I really don't care about anything else. Also, if I play a Denuvo game or another DRM game, sometimes a clean install feels like having a nice shower.

Your settings to redo all each time (rebind is hell long), do as you wish, engin INI custom, allright take your time.

 

[DirtyDingusMcgee]

I only re-install them when necessary. If i have a windows-breaking software or hardware issue, which are few and far between (with good back-ups, not really a thing). With OEM systems, I will typically re-format them straight out of the box.