I have a friend who reinstalls Windows XP every two years. Is this necessary? Will it improve the performance of Windows? I have had my computer for 2 years now and have noticed some changes in the performance of Windows. Nothing major, but I am wondering if any of you experts out there do this?
not really. if you look after your pc well enough you shouldnt have to ever reinstall windows (in theory anyway) a fresh install can be usefull if your pc is mucking up or you just want to get rid of everything so its like it was when you bought it
I would say yes. this is definatly benificial, windows backlogs lots of data into hidden system files that are not deleted these include files that log websites visited and data to help windows locate files on your hard drive faster, all these added together will eventually slow down overall system performance, if you are an amature or begginner user of a computer chances are you will come face to face with alot of spyware so, reinstalling may be extremly benificial to these people
Win 9x had a definate problem that pretty much required a reinstall every 6-9 months for performance reasons. I haven't seen that so much with XP, though [bold]rundata[/bold] is correct in that there is a good chance that there will crop up problems through age as long as Microsoft continues to use the registry construct. I agree that backing up and reinstalling the system peiodically would be a good thing... it unclutters your computer, gets rid of old stuff you don't need, and gives you the opportunity to upgrade to the latest and greatest versions of your favorite utilities and drivers.
You certainly do not have to reinstall xp every couple of years. Imagine if you did , what those big corporations would have to do that have 300 + PCs. Even if there is "back logged data" it would not have anything to do with the way the pc runs, when you click on a program or boot the pc xp does not read every little piece of data on a disks, if this was so my pc with an almost full 300gig sata drive would run really slow. I can almost gaurantee you have either : spyware, trojans, viruses, BHOs or a combination or all on your pc. Each one of these , and some are designed to, zap pc performance.
I flatten my PC every 6 months or so. I maintain my PC regularly, but the increase in performance with a flatten is amazing!
I do not have spyware, viruses or trojans on my computer. It has been meticulously maintained. I don't have major issues with windows (i.e - crashing)but I have notice small annoying things such as a serious increase in the time it takes to switch users, windows graphics hanging after they have been closed for a short time, start menu and bar grapics loading funny when switching users or restarting, things of this nature. I was just wondering if my Windows has reached its "half-life" and whether reinstalling and reformating the harddrive will make it run smooth and fast again.
