Was just sitting here doing a fresh install of Windows on one of my boxes and was wondering how often do any of you wipe your harddrive(s) and do fresh installs of your operating system(s)?
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Was just sitting here doing a fresh install of Windows on one of my boxes and was wondering how often do any of you wipe your harddrive(s) and do fresh installs of your operating system(s)?
I change OS's at least once a week on at least one of my machines.
I only have 2 permanant machines. AMD box running RH 9, and a Dell laptop running 98SE (Yes, dammit. I admit it, I have Windows. /me starts crying).
The new laptop is getting SuSE soon...
Ughh.. Depends on how many times I mess windows up =/. I usually like to do it at least once every 6 months or so, usually a pain though, as long as you can get all the documents you need. The first week or so re-installing all the plug-ins, and windows updates, will be a pain =/. I know I got to do that soon, messed up my Windows partition and cant boot into it. Thank god for you SuSE!
Let me know how suse works out for you haven't got around to downloading it yet been toying around with gentoo for a day or two now
I think I'm going to get the box set. I love RH, but of course that came to an end...
It is looking very promising, especially since it comes with an NTFS resizer. Damn Windows partition...
I'll let everyone know how it turns out.
w00t
I reinstall windows whenever I start to have serious problems with it. The last time I had a problem with windows and had to reinstall was 1 1/2 years ago.
Windows runs great for me.
What I do is every 6 months or so I go websirfing for all the non-critical software I have, then download and burn updated versions if any exist, or upgrade major version of more important stuff like antivirus and word processors. I take a weekend to install everything, which includes all the patches, updates, and plugins. Once that is all done I ghost the system to a hard drive only used for backups.
Then I can restore whichever OS it is I want to anytime I want, and I only need to get things like security patches and virus definitions newer than the date on the ghost file. I usually reghost from those images every 2 weeks.
Between Slackware and Windows, it usually requires two 12-hour days for everything, which I set aside a weekend for.
I'm the same as cheyenne here. I usually only do it when I have problems. Of course that is with windows, I regularly wipe one of my computers just trying different things and different distros of linux. Does anyone know, if you are wiping a windows installation, what you need to get for Norton so that you can continue getting your updates when you reinstall. I really need to reinstall my XP pro box and don't know what to do to keep my Norton subscription.Quote:
Originally posted here by cheyenne1212
I reinstall windows whenever I start to have serious problems with it. The last time I had a problem with windows and had to reinstall was 1 1/2 years ago.
Windows runs great for me.
I just reinstall Norton and the subscription is automatically renewed... they think it's a new copy. If you're using 2004, which requires activation, it might be a little more difficult.
I am about to reinstall norton right now but what I am thinking is going to happen is that I will have another full year of free updates.
lol
I have never bought a subscription to norton lol
I always just reinstall when the time comes. lol
but yeah, on 2004, its like XP its about impossible. :(
Bah someone will create a key gen for it soon They have them for Microsoft products
:D
I usually reformat every 3-4 months. Not necessarily because something goes wrong, but more for house-keeping purposes. Alot of junk builds up on here and i really don't like having to hunt it all down.
Ok h3r3tic I got done with all the updates and if you are using 2003 it does give another year
I guest I'm good. I ran Windows 98 3 years in row without reformating. No idea who I did it! Now, I'm on Windows XP since 2 years without problem. So the question is, I usually change computer when I re-install a OS! :)
My 2k box has been running for a year now, so I guess its time to reformat. Before the last reformat I reformatted the machine every 6 months.
I have production machines that run 98,98se,Me,2K and XP and have been going for between 1 and 3 years without having to re-install.
I used to re-install 95 around every 6 months, as that seemed to improve performance. I guess the machines that I am running now have so much "redundancy" it isn't required anymore?
I have a few development/lab/labrat machines that I wipe and re-install regularly, for example when I have let a "nasty" lose on it :) or when I am starting a new project. The main reason is that I want a "level playing field" for my testing/experiments, or I need to create a particular "reference machine" environment for stability/compatibility testing purposes.
That is why I always rabbit on to newbs about getting hold of old ex-corporate boxes for experimenting, and don't do it on their main machine, shared with brother/sister, college network :D
It is a bit like a chemistry experiment......you don't want it contaminated by residues left over from a previous experiment?
Cheers
Thank you for the confirmation. I will probably do a fresh install then if that's the case. I have so much time now, That might give me at least an hour of something to do.Quote:
Originally posted here by DeadAddict
Ok h3r3tic I got done with all the updates and if you are using 2003 it does give another year
well, i think i reinstall my windows box about every 2 month, not that i want to, but it just gets messy after that time...
My other computers, a hackme computer running win2000 is never being reinstalled, i just use it to test exploits on it and play with it.
And my Linux box running RedHat9 gets a reinstall maybe never.
Well, i had it running for 3 months, then i wanted to try other distro's: Gentoo, Debian, Slackware. But RedHat was just fine. Nice and complete.
Then my stupid notebook, currently running winXP, but tommorow im gonna put RedHat9 on that one as well :)
Not a problem h3r3tic have fun during the hour of the install and updates.
:D
OH MY GOD NO! Drop Gentoo and get SuSE :) (Like anyone is really shocked at that comment).Quote:
Originally posted here by DeadAddict
Let me know how suse works out for you haven't got around to downloading it yet been toying around with gentoo for a day or two now
Honestly, this will seem strange, but I reformat about.... 3-5 times a week. I have one box running Windows XP that I leave alone because I need it for school and porn, but the rest are pretty much fair game. The XP box is a Compaq Presario 6000 with a 2.13 GHz AMD Athlon XP 2600 + and 512 MBs RAM, 120 GB HD, and 32 MB Vid Card.
The next PC is a Medion running....Windows XP, NetBSD, Slackware, and SuSE....and it did run Redhat ( like once or twice. It has a 2.40 GHz Celeron Processor, 128 MB Nvidia Vid card, 256 MBs RAM, oh, and before I forget, they all have 17 inch flat screen monitors. Also this has an 80 GB HD.
Then next to that is this box. It's an HP Pavilion with a Pentium 3 733 MHz machine with a 43 GB HD, 384 MBs RAM, 16 MB Nvidia Vid Card, Sound Blaster Live! Card....Oh and, they are hooked up to my 3MB a second connection. each one has at least 2 firewalls.
The Compaq has very nice, loud, good sized speakers, the Medion has two speakers and a subwoofer so my neighboors can tell when I'm winning at Unreal Tournament, and this one has a set of Labtecs hooked up.
Heh, with all this, including two stereos, two Bass Amps, a guitar Amp, and the fact that I have a million Misfits CDs, and the fact that I can play most of their songs on bass, gutar, and drums, I think I could make it so you could hear any one song by the Misfits for a couple blocks.
:)
Don't worry Gore I am currently downloading Suse will test it out when I get some free time and when it finishes downloading
:D
I just did the ftp install of suse 9 I think 2 days ago. It really looks good and different from 8.2. I had also done the ftp install of 8.2. I actually downloaded each package for the ftp install and put them on an ftp server on my own network. It only took like an hour for the whole install, although I went with the default package selection and didn't customize it. That hour included me downloading a few packeges that I had forgotten to download(hey, it's hard to keep track when downloading over 2000 packages). Then, for some reason the OpenOffice I had wasn't working and I tried redownloading it which took about 15 minutes, but it still didn't work. So I probably could have been done in less than an hour. So far I like it. I haven't really done anything with it though. I was going to post a screenshot in the show your stuff thread, but apparently the default ftp install excludes the import command. Oh well. Maybe I will reinstall with more packages added, and also try to get a good copy of openoffice. Go Suse, it rules. I am getting these distros for christmas from linuxcd.org: Suse, gentoo, knoppix, freeBSD, slackware, mandrake, Debian, and Libranet. Should make for a lot of fun testing and a whole bunch of wiping and installing going on. (you know you're a geek when you get distros of linux for christmas). Cheers.
p.s. My dad doesn't believe me that you can just reinstall Norton and have your free updates for a year again. I don't know if I will end up wiping and reinstalling or not.
To be on the safe side I would delete the partitions on the drive habbit I have. all you can do is test it and see what happends
Over all I will have to say every 3 1/2 months or when something triggers the install.
Well its usually when I feel like changing my main boxes dual boot. What ever distro I feel like burning. I always keep the Xp on the back side of any distro dont know why.
I have to say, I have a quick fuse when it comes to windows messing up any fishy lagg or any wierd adnormal activity on that box and I swear to god I do a reinstall right on the spot. I guess its just a wierd fetis.
But I kind of enjoy reinstalling OS's. Maybe thats because I rarely keep personal info on the drive. Most every thing I need apps wise are on file including updates. The only thing realy on the drive is music and apps.