How often do you (re)install your OS?

[Space Lynx]

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

you are not understanding, I rarely play games where I need to customize ini folders, etc. rebinds i rarely do as well, i usually play whatever is default. meh

I will admit, the batman arkham games on steam, i had to edit like two ini files for each of those games to get native refresh rate to work, that was kind of annoying to deal with

 

[Princess Garnet]

Less often as time goes on.

I reinstalled Windows XP a lot. I was younger, I was fiddling with things a lot (disabling services, page file, registry cleaners, etc.), I was installing customization stuff like Windows themes and docks, and so on. Windows XP and the hardware of the time ("capacitor plague" comes to mind) may have mixed into this as well.

I reinstalled Windows 7 once... in around 11 and a half years of use. And it was early on, and I forget why (new motherboard/CPU/RAM late 2011 I think?). I do know I went from a 640 GB HDD to a 256 GB SSD late 2012, and then to a 1 TB SSD in the late 2010s, and both were just done with cloning software, not operating system reinstalls. So 2011 to 2020 was one install.

I reinstalled Windows 10 once since moving to it in mid-2020, and that was purely as a troubleshooting measure last year when my new video card was faulty.

It admittedly irks me when I see people suggest to others to reinstall Windows as a solution to an issue so casually. Like, the suggestion is sometimes fine; sometimes you can't figure the problem out and that's worth trying... but I've seen people suggest it pretty early in troubleshooting (and they never admit it's because they couldn't figure the issue out), and they treat it as a typical, casual troubleshooting thing like it's no big deal. "Well it shouldn't be a time cost because you should have an ISO/image/whatever ready to go and you should be able to be up and running again in 30 minutes". There's a good chance this is "tell me your software environment is nothing but a browser and Steam with games without telling me". And what about the time cost of setting that up and maintaining it to keep it up to date? We're not counting that why? And why is there even a need for that? What are people doing to their operating system to need to reinstall it that often?

(Note, if you reinstall operating systems often or keep preparation measures to ease that, I'm not criticizing you or that; there's nothing wrong with any of that if you want to do it, but I am criticizing those who push it onto others and hand-wave away the time investment of getting certain software environments back up and running.)

 

[Klemc]

Last time i made this as a joke, telling "reinstall your OS" LOL, i'll never doi it never again i promise

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Well my OS is pretty fresh since built this box a few months ago so I havent bothered updating to 24H2. Everything is running perfectly fine. I could net myself some free performance because im on a X3D chip but I mainly play older titles and this box is already pretty overkill for all of those games anyway. Until this box starts really bogging down or buggy as hell with all the windows updates. I'm going to stick with the current install for another year or so.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I havent bothered updating to 24H2

You should give it a try. In a debloated form it's really very good.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Never. I install once and that's it.


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.

It felt more necessary back when it was more wild-west online. You never knew when something might take you out, and AV programs weren't always effective, and you were on a single core system where every free bit of resources could bring meaningful gains in game performance. We've come a long way since MSblaster took down PCs that were just sitting there.

All in all, I'm actually surprised with the feedback so far. Even in an enthusiast community, folks really seem to have the desire to leave well enough alone. A bit ironic, since these days it takes little time at all to format and reinstall. Back in the days of NT4, the install required booting through 4 floppies before it could access the CD component, and then after maybe 30-40 minutes of copying to spinning rust, you'd boot for the first time. From there, you'd have to install service packs which might take another hour. You were definitely out of commission for the task. When BIOSes finally started being able to boot from optical drives, that helped the first step. It always sucked when one of your 4 floppies stopped reading. I always had 2 copies of each disk on hand!

 

[Klemc]

You should give it a try. In a debloated form it's really very good.

You're pushing somebody to reinstall his OS, really !?

Mmh.

 

[lexluthermiester]

You're pushing somebody to reinstall his OS, really !?

Mmh.

Yup.

 

[jaszy]

Every year. I've been using enterprise trail formats since 2008-2009ish.

Generally rearm max count and reformat.

 

[R0H1T]

Almost every time in the last few years due to primocache deferred writes, not a fan of S&M but that's probably as close to it as you can get on PC

 

[Vincero]

Really depends on hardware changes and workload (more for my work device).

My 'game / leisure' PC will get reinstalled usually when a significant enough hardware change happens (i.e. CPU+Mobo) - last change was 2021 with Ryzen 5700 / B550 upgrade - at this point in time I have no reason to change anything (apart from GPU maybe but as I don't have many RT capable games on rotation and am yet to find it a compelling offering I'm not inclined to ditch the GTX 1080 yet), but I guess Windows 11 install will be needed... so there's that.

I work on different fixed term contracts and have a seperate work PC to keep any work/business stuff isolated - which I usually end up wiping and re-installing maybe every 1 or 1.5 years due to moving to a different contract which (usually) has different software requirements, etc. - either way it's a good way to clear out any old accounts linked to stuff I don't need - sometimes I upgrade it with any bits that may come to hand (which is also a good reason to reinstall).

 

[Princess Garnet]

Last time i made this as a joke, telling "reinstall your OS" LOL, i'll never doi it never again i promise

Well, don't misunderstand me.

I'm not saying that suggesting it is bad. Nor is doing it because the issue is something that you otherwise can't figure out.

I just see it as the "nuclear" option, and I think some people are a little too happy to throw the suggestion around early and easily in any troubleshooting scenario.

All in all, I'm actually surprised with the feedback so far. Even in an enthusiast community, folks really seem to have the desire to leave well enough alone. A bit ironic, since these days it takes little time at all to format and reinstall.

I can only speak for myself, but a lot of the things I leave alone are precisely because because I've learned better. I installed Windows XP many handfuls of times. I don't have the willingness to waste that much time any more. If something may be beneficial, I'll either research it, or try it myself to see what the difference is. If I can't find an obvious reason for it one way or the other, I'll leave it at the default. Worst case scenario, I might be missing out on some small benefit by leaving something alone, which is generally better than breaking something (and "breaking something" can simply be a session crash or application crash as opposed to a broken operating system). It's worse when it comes to something like the page file, which often gets perpetuated specifically by enthusiasts and other people with more RAM than they use, so they get away with settings that might be restrictive, and so they push it on others who probably aren't in that "have more RAM than I touch" boat with justifications like "you totally have to manually define your page file or games won't work right". And if you try and tell them why recommendations like that could be harmful, or ask them to prove any of these things they say, they tend to bow out, or they give you the "it's worked fine for me for years/decades". I might be picky on this one because it's one I used to do, and then I learned better, and I often have to help people fix this when it causes them issues because they changed it because "someone advised them to".

And reinstalling the operating system is definitely faster, but that isn't the part that takes the most time and effort for me. Even back when we were installing from optical media to hard drives, it wasn't even close to the part that took up the most time. The time and effort part is getting the software environment set up the way I want. For some of us, that's a lot more than it is for others. Why waste that time if I don't too have to? "Windows is faster when fresh?" Okay, the time I'm potentially saving is more than lost with the extra time installing it fresh/setting it up, especially when it just slows back down again anyway. And my system starts up fast enough for me anyway; most of the time is spent in the BIOS/POST phase because of my RAM and storage configuration, so a fresh Windows install won't help there.

This community seems to skew a bit older in my impression? If so, I'd say the reason is perhaps because a lot of people have "been there, done that" and don't have the willingness to burn time for placebo or risks anymore. Time becomes more valuable as you get older.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I basically reinstall as-needed and after the days of Windows XP much less frequently. Gaming PC however takes the cake in needing the most reinstalls since that is where I have done most experimenting with things and where bad OC corrupting the OS on NVMe. With my work machine I basically have everything in VM's so really no bullshit to mess up my host OS so the need to reinstall there is never. Windows 10 made things much nicer and easier to reinstall and significantly faster.

 

[cvaldes]

Windows: every 2-4 years on each system
Linux: way too often
Mac: can't remember the last time I did this

There has been a Mac in my house for over three decades. I've had Windows and Linux systems in the house since the late Nineties.

 

[AusWolf]

I don't reinstall unless something's broken and I have to. My current Windows 10 installation has survived at least 3-4 complete system swaps with both Intel and AMD CPUs, different GPUs, etc.

The only reason I see this coming to an end is because I've had enough of Microsoft's bullshit of automatically installing apps and features without asking me, nagging me about Windows 11 upgrades and such, so I'm going over to Linux soon.

 

[eidairaman1]

Thank goodness for system restore

 

[Hyderz]

my gaming desktop has reinstalled twice in span of 6 years...

 

[Klemc]

The SteamDeck i'll never reinstall, never never never, i managed to upgrade/date only (2024-5 2024-10 23H2 always) Ghost Spectre by full ISO/USB, i had to change locale infos (kb ui...) with ADK to match but it worked.

 

[Ruru]

Hard to say, mostly when I do major hardware upgrades. Luckily Win10/11 doesn't get screwed like XP back in the day when a monthly reinstall wasn't anything special.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

At least once a day maybe twice on Sunday in case I'm busy that week.....

 

[AleXXX666]

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.

haven't you heard of CLONING partitions/drives instead of reinstalling? Uh yeah, I DO KNOW that Windows cloning software is WAY BETTER than this "alternative" one, huh

yeah I too became a bit lazy but honestly on all that fast cpu lotta ram and ssds the process is pretty fast, one just have to be patient lol

 

[Klemc]

haven't you heard of CLONING partitions/drives instead of reinstalling? Uh yeah, I DO KNOW that Windows cloning software is WAY BETTER than this "alternative" one, huh

yeah I too became a bit lazy but honestly on all that fast cpu lotta ram and ssds the process is pretty fast, one just have to be patient lol

Install is near instant, at least i use ADK to turn all OFF and it's like that, now to backup your stuff there is Synkback for files/folders, then the regitry is possible with SMA Registry, once file/folder listed and regitry list done, backup to reapply on fresh instal is instantly done too, except the Windows crappy boring to set settings, but now i uninstall WD so i'm good.

 

[Frick]

haven't you heard of CLONING partitions/drives instead of reinstalling? Uh yeah, I DO KNOW that Windows cloning software is WAY BETTER than this "alternative" one, huh

yeah I too became a bit lazy but honestly on all that fast cpu lotta ram and ssds the process is pretty fast, one just have to be patient lol

Never really tried cloning, I never felt it was worth it. A reinstall is a good time to clean house.

As for me I'll echo the sentiment "as rarely as possible". The MAIN reason for that is actually the Epic store, because it can't add already existing games to the library, you'll have to do an annoying workaround or downloading them again. But yeah Win98SE I reinstalled so often I knew the key by heart.

 

[Macro Device]

At least a couple times a year because Windows still can't tolerate doing more than just sitting there and using same stuff over and over again. Irreversible registry corruption is still not unheard of. Reinstalls take way less time than troubleshooting (documentation on errors I run into almost never exists in whatever language I speak or can somewhat comprehend) so I go nuclear option to save this time.

Current OS, W11 24H2, survived for 16 days. We'll see.

I'm totally not sold on OSes being perfect. Of course back in a day they were terrible and even beloved XP SP3 was more fragile than an incorrectly tempered glass piece. But it's easy to botch it even today.

 

[Klemc]

To me it looks like the less KB update applied the less problems popup along time.