Should You Reinstall Windows Every Year?

Thats why servers mostly run Linux!

If you let Microsoft roam freely on a Windows 10 system, yeah, you'll have to do something to keep it from breaking apart.

If you want peace and the software you own just working day in day out, when you need it and without hick up, you'll have to install Windows 8 or Linux.
Because letting Microshaft hold reign over your system with W10 has proven to be just asking for continual trouble.

reinstallation of all the individual programs (daily use or rarely use), the configs, where I've placed the icons and pinned launchers, any change in behaviour throws off the workflow. windows and drivers reinstall is easy, the danger is in missing out a few program/config which comes and bites us on late night on the date of some release .

wish there was a way that could automate (at least in making a list of all programs for reinstallation).
The only reason my office PC still has a spinning disk is that IT will not reimage the drive onto an SSD, they want to give a fresh install.

I used to flush and reinstall once or twice a year, but now so much is streaming or download I hit data limits. I put a drawer in my case to keep the CDs. The issue is getting programs which are available for a limited time or which can now now longer be downloaded. I greatly prefer to download the entire program and not just an installer.

Millennium did one thing very well. I ran out of physical room for more drives, and Millennium easily let me plug a Win 98 machine into the Millennium machine with a crossover network cable and the Millennium machine seamlessly used the Win 98 machine drives. I needed the drives space, so I had to tolerate Money Edition.

You guys are getting a stutter or dropped frames every couple of minutes in your videos. I don't know what the problem might be, but it there all the time lately. Hope that helps!

Watching this kinda takes me back to my old windows xp where I'd fresh install windows every month and reinstalling every single program and games on an internet dial up modem.. Good days 😅

Had no real issues in 7 years. Only 3 bsod's when i was incorrectly messing with some clocks. Also, didn't reinstall in 7 years. No major hardware upgrades either, aside from more harddrives and 1 gpu refresh. No antivirus either.
All it takes is not clicking on the hot singles in my area populp. (or just use ublock origin)

Your not that old to remember dos 3?

I find myself dabating if i should reload. My setup is 10, that was upgraded from win 7 that was loaded in 09 on X58 with a 920. and now X299 with 10920X. so my install is 12 years old, and i seem t o do pretty well with games, and benchmark runs, however, it might be time to re install. since i changed out boards, and CPU's over
the years. Plus i DDU drivers often anyway and use revo uninstaller to clean up stuff.

THis might seem trivial, but I love your outro music, I feel like Im watching Air Wolf or something. I think you're old enough to know that show...
ahhhh good times...

now days installing windows on modern hardware takes what 15 minutes? back in the day when i started owning pc's (windows 98) it took what 2 hours just for windows to do it's thing, it was painfully slow. granted setting up your system with all the settings and apps that you use takes time as well, but hey i have all my app/drivers on my storage hard drive ready to go. and god forbid you did not source all the drivers and stuff beforehand cause downloading stuff on 56k connection was not really an option tbh

Had to reinstall because Ms broke my network when they removed homegroup. I could add network drives but they would dissappear after a couple days and had to be setup again. I saw this was a pretty common issue online so reinstalled and all network issues were gone. Before we would reinstall every year because other software messed up our installs. Now MS has us covered in that department with their broken updates.

Should I reinstall windows if I replace my ram with something with better timing

You make me remember the reason i switched to linux.

I just did this yesterday. Video got suggested again haha. Makes such a noticeable difference on a 4/4 i5 3330

If only photoshop and my reverb g2 worked natively on linux.

I haven't reinstalled windows 10 since i upgraded from windows7

Windows ME. A good OS. All the problems with Windows NT that Microsoft had to ignore everything else for.

Just recently while playing Warzone with my friends I noticed my GPU is not utilized in 100% (I7 6700k at 4.6GHz, RTX2070S, 16GB ram 3000Mhz) I also didnt noticed any inprovement while dlss was on balanced or performance setting. I tried Cyberpunk just to check gpu utylization and it was abysmal. My FPS was stuck at 10 fps. Tried Witcher 3- utylization 50%. Before any of that I noticed my system was running slower than usual and my 3dmark scores were lower than usual but I just thougt my 6700k is bottleneckig the rest of the system. After investigating I learnd about few Windows Updates that actually lower your PCs performance. I did uninstall them but to no avail. In the end I reset the whole OS and now everything is running as it should. Should you reinstall Windows every year - yes, if you see loss in your performance/FPS.

When I install many junk and uninstall them then I just reinstall windows as program like torrents en apps that looks fine but gives problems

windows 3.0 was on, like, 23 floppies!

Me and my friends are having problems with Windows that we all had to reinstall.

ideally everyone would save all their drivers (and even several versions) on a thumb drive when they build the computer and keep them for the reinstall / rebuild process.

Add Chocolatey to the mix for setups. Great little tool 👌🏾

Service pack a , b , lol gd old days of win 98 ….

I knew a guy who reinstall his every month!! I thought it was completely overkill and pointless but hey

Yeah. My ethnet and wifi cards are not recognized. And I have no sound devices. I can not download any drivers.

I don't reinstall even on mobo upgrades.
Just uninstall the drivers both via normal uninstall and on device manager.

I recently picked my old PC out of the closet … put in a 16 gig ram set (it used to have one 8g stick) and re installed windows …. Holy moly. I can’t believe I had this computer collecting dust. Now it runs just as good as my new PC. And I actually prefer gaming on the old one now so my new one stays nice longer

With decent SSD's and programs to keep things cleaned up there's no need to reinstall these days. All my machines feel fast all the time now. My Windows 10 install was done in 2018, I might redo it if I start overclocking again.

No! You should not "clean install" Windows every year. You should "clean install" Microsoft Windows every month), not just to keep Windows "clean", but to keep your Windows-installation skills honed.

I am not one of those people who poo-poo Windows Me because it's the "cool" thing to do. I had a few hiccups and some things that were a pain at first, but it was worth it all. FOR ME, it was such a better experience than XP. I am not the ordinary user though. Been working with computers since 1967 and cut my teeth on machine language, assembly and Fortran II and PL/I.

Once every year or two is fine. It's not a waste of time. Nothing feels as good as a fresh, clutter free install.

I remember windows 2.5 on DOS 4.3... never saw dos 3. Remember memmaker? 😅

When i went to MCSE school a million years ago one of the classes had us installing NT over and over and over... took so long from a 4x cdrom 😅

It really depends. If you're stricly gaming you might be fine, but otherwise a reinstall every once in a while is healthy.

My system is in desperate need of one. Between VPNs, Bluetooth devices, many different RGB softwares, GPU and CPU upgrades, not to mention a ton of regular softwares I've used in 2 years, I'm sure there's perfomance to be gained when I finally format this thing.

Reinstalling Windows is fast. It's reinstalling your apps that takes a lifetime. I just create a system image of a fresh install with my apps, then just restore from it if the current install gets screwed up.

I reinstall my Win10 once a year for a simple reason.
I have some programs I need for a moment. I will install them, use them, uninstall them.
The problem is they leave sh*t ton of random dirs and files.
It gets me nuts.
I like to have my system nice and clean...

windows 3.11

with a shit ton in floppy drives!!!

Every 6 months-1 year. Usually when explorer gets slow after an update. Still prefer Linux for daily driver (Mint & ArcoLinux). Arch based have been my only breakage, Manjaro can obliterate nvidia drivers. Were I to clean install again maybe upgrading the nvme capacity while I'm at it or for a new build. Also have a backup Windows ready to go. Takes about half hour or so to set up each machine, DDU, grab nvidia drivers, optimize, browser customization.

Sweetheart, do y’all have a reinstall windows 10 (not a fan of 11) and can you make a video for dummies?

If i can give my computer a 5% performance increase by spending 10 to 15 minutes reinstalling Windows... then i'm going to resintall Windows...

i install windows every 6 months

Just watching this and literally everything the guy said, is 100% true to me experience as Systems Engineer.

Linux is just gettin so much better because of valve. I cant wait until the day microsoft stops supporting windows 10 then ill full convert to linux

Pre-SSD, it was recommended to reinstall the OS every 1-3 years, even if there were no issues. Mainly to get rid of old, corrupt data and other cleanup reasons.

However, with SSD I haven't seen if that's still the case.

I've also read with SSD registry scanners weren't needed.

Thoughts?

Yeah idk, my pc always ends up having odd hiccups and stutters, until I do a full reinstall. Im now resorting to enterprise using tiny10 to slim it down. Idk if it’s all the extra stuff I run but it’s annoying but necessary for some.