Author Topic: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?  (Read 11747 times)

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Offline Kavik

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How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 11:06:09 »
How often do you wipe your C drive, reinstall Windows, and then transfer your backed up files back to your computer (AKA wipe and reload)? I used to do this on my old computer any time something weird started happening, a few times per year. Since building my current PC in 2013, I've reinstalled only once, and that was after a drive got toasted in the computer's first month of life before I had a backup image. So I've been running the same installation since 2013, which started as Windows 7 and was upgraded to Windows 10 in 2016. This is partly because of laziness and partly to test how long I could go without a wipe and reload.

I think it may be time to do a clean installation of Windows 10 (after making a backup image of course) just to see if it fixes any of the weird issues that crop up from time to time. Although, since my C drive is now an SSD, I suppose I can skip the "wipe" step.
Maybe they're waiting for gasmasks and latex to get sexy again.

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Offline Darthbaggins

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #1 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 11:16:38 »
on the re-install I would hit shift+F10, run Diskpart and tell it to Clean the OS drive (then exit, exit) - then do a fresh install, that way no remnants of the old OS are on the drive prior to full install.  Also update your install media with the MSFT w10 media creation tool (prevents having to do a huge amount of updates).
I know I need to do a fresh install soon on my main rig and need to swap some media and game drives over to larger drives/backup to clear up some space on my SSD based game and work/scratch array.
« Last Edit: Tue, 19 January 2021, 11:18:18 by Darthbaggins »

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Offline Timbersawdust

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #2 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 11:23:37 »
I've done too many OS re-installs that have wiped previous settings that I forgot to save that I am very hesitant to do it again, unless I REALLY need to.

Offline funkmon

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #3 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 11:48:17 »
I think I wipe more than most, but I'm not really sure why. New PC in 2014, then I upgraded to an SSD in 2017 and I wiped, then it died in 2019, then I built a new computer, wiped it for stability, wiped it when I upgraded to an NVME.

Most of my settings are saved online or backed up on other hard disks. I just have to go through and reinstall software as I discover I don't have it.

Offline noisyturtle

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #4 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 16:50:47 »
wtf I didn't even know there was some weird Win reinstall cult.

Once. Like any normal human I only install my Windows once.

Offline Shapey Fiend

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #5 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 18:31:13 »
I think there was more of a necessity to do this back in the old days when hard drive space was precious.

I usually buy a new PC/laptop every 3 years so now I don't bother.

Offline fohat.digs

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #6 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 18:35:27 »
>3 years +/- <2 years.

That is when I buy a new hard drive and retire the old one out to pasture (but still intact as a backup).

Sometimes once in between if it is getting annoyingly wonky.

"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
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Offline Leslieann

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #7 on: Tue, 19 January 2021, 22:29:23 »
Prior to Win10 even MS recommended a wipe/refresh once a year.
Honestly though, for anything prior to Win7 even that was optimistic for most people.

Personally, barring something weird or me doing lots of experimenting XP was every 4-6 months, Win7 was 6-9 months, I skipped Win8 and I switched to Linux and Mac as soon as Win10 escaped beta testing. I would expect 9-12 months if I was still using that based on prior versions and matches what I do in Linux.
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Offline hvontres

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #8 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 02:07:17 »
Speaking of wiping Windows, why in the name of all that's holy can't Microsoft make it possible to install the ENTIRE users folder on a separate drive/parition form the rest of the OS. Since every application seems to want to put it's data there and it would be so much easier to deal with.... kind of like having a separate /home in your linux file system...
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Offline yui

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #9 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 02:19:58 »
Prior to Win10 even MS recommended a wipe/refresh once a year.
Honestly though, for anything prior to Win7 even that was optimistic for most people.

Personally, barring something weird or me doing lots of experimenting XP was every 4-6 months, Win7 was 6-9 months, I skipped Win8 and I switched to Linux and Mac as soon as Win10 escaped beta testing. I would expect 9-12 months if I was still using that based on prior versions and matches what I do in Linux.
i had a windows 7 "stable" for almost a decade without reinstall, the windows 10 i replaced it with 2 weeks ago is starting to get strange behaviors... although i know that i am rather extremely good at finding bugs in windows 10, so it may not help :)
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Offline SBJ

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #10 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 05:01:12 »
Never if I can help it. :D
Although I can't help it so probably once every six months to a year.
And it's mostly because it can feel kinda bloaty if you've installed a bunch of **** on it.

Offline Leslieann

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #11 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 05:35:29 »
i had a windows 7 "stable" for almost a decade without reinstall, the windows 10 i replaced it with 2 weeks ago is starting to get strange behaviors... although i know that i am rather extremely good at finding bugs in windows 10, so it may not help :)
Win10 suffers from update-itis.


Speaking of wiping Windows, why in the name of all that's holy can't Microsoft make it possible to install the ENTIRE users folder on a separate drive/parition form the rest of the OS. Since every application seems to want to put it's data there and it would be so much easier to deal with.... kind of like having a separate /home in your linux file system...
Even MS can't get it right or even consistent. If you use Outlook, the first data folder goes in My Documents, but any secondary or archived stuff goes into local, it also uses up 10% of the recommended max size just on formatting. They also shove settings that belong in the registry in there so copying all of it can cause problems of you move it to another system, thanks MS, thanks a lot. Google completely just says heck with it and shoves everything Chrome into local (which is cache) then further burying cache inside that, they also include prior versions of the installer, so it sucks up even more space. And then you have Quicken... We'll just put them in Program files. What kind of an animal does that?


Never if I can help it. :D
Although I can't help it so probably once every six months to a year.
And it's mostly because it can feel kinda bloaty if you've installed a bunch of **** on it.
This is why I can't keep them running long.
As soon as I see a performance drop it gets wiped. I don't tolerate slow systems and unless your system is old as dirt it can probably run decent with a fresh install. I have 2nd gen systems that still run great.
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Offline yui

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #12 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 06:22:34 »
Win10 suffers from update-itis.
yeah i see that, we had a pc at work in a reboot loop because of an update that kept on failing, so every hour it rebooted itself to try again...
This is why I can't keep them running long.
As soon as I see a performance drop it gets wiped. I don't tolerate slow systems and unless your system is old as dirt it can probably run decent with a fresh install. I have 2nd gen systems that still run great.
my work PC is an i3-3110, worked slightly better on 7 but once i removed all the bloat from 10 it still runs rather well, just the login screen for some reasons take a long time to activate the keyboard. although given how long it was to boot on the old hdd i upgraded that as well (with 10 wanting to update all the time, the 30 minutes boot times were not gonna do it) so it may have a positive effect too
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Offline Darthbaggins

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #13 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 07:50:15 »
Win10 suffers from update-itis.
yeah i see that, we had a pc at work in a reboot loop because of an update that kept on failing, so every hour it rebooted itself to try again...
This is why I can't keep them running long.
As soon as I see a performance drop it gets wiped. I don't tolerate slow systems and unless your system is old as dirt it can probably run decent with a fresh install. I have 2nd gen systems that still run great.
my work PC is an i3-3110, worked slightly better on 7 but once i removed all the bloat from 10 it still runs rather well, just the login screen for some reasons take a long time to activate the keyboard. although given how long it was to boot on the old hdd i upgraded that as well (with 10 wanting to update all the time, the 30 minutes boot times were not gonna do it) so it may have a positive effect too

That machine that is stuck in a update loop, just run update troubleshooter and it should find the issue for the most part - also you can go in and remove the last update that is causing an issue. 
I used a win10 debloater tool on my machines at home and only re-add apps that I actually use, while on my son's I left everything off and only added if it was needed for school (since they do remote learning for now).  At work I tweaked an image to remove all the bloat so they are lighter installs and pull down what is really needed per the machine (most are 3rd and 4th gen core i5/i7's).

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Offline yqqdrasil

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #14 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 10:51:42 »
Once a year. Sometimes every 6 months, I save these occasions for when the internet is out and I have nothing to do.

I keep a flashdrive with all the installers for my necessary programs, and one of my SSDs has all of my photos/videos/music so it's not much of a headache apart from doing all the Windows updates and drivers.

I always do a full fresh install, not from a back-up or anything.

Offline Kavik

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #15 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 13:30:08 »
wtf I didn't even know there was some weird Win reinstall cult.

Once. Like any normal human I only install my Windows once.

When I was setting up my former HTPC to stream to my Xbox 360 via Windows Media Center, I performed a fresh installation of Windows 7, but no videos could play on the Xbox (the video processing is done on the PC in this setup IIRC). I tried for days to install codec packs and such to make it work to no avail. Then I reinstalled Windows 7, and it worked. Two fresh installations from the same DVD to the same computer, just a couple days apart with different results.
Maybe they're waiting for gasmasks and latex to get sexy again.

The world has become a weird place.

Offline dgneo

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #16 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 14:50:24 »
Once. Back in the days of HDDs/Win XP maybe once every couple years, but I don’t see a valid reason anymore.

Offline Leslieann

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #17 on: Wed, 20 January 2021, 21:45:52 »
That machine that is stuck in a update loop, just run update troubleshooter and it should find the issue for the most part - also you can go in and remove the last update that is causing an issue.
Yes this works, but do you really expect grandma to be able to do that? Basic diagnostic tools shouldn't be hidden, and this is basic. You should be able to walk someone through it over the phone in a matter of a couple minutes at worst.


my work PC is an i3-3110, worked slightly better on 7 but once i removed all the bloat from 10 it still runs rather well
Not sure if this still works on10 but does on 7 and 8.

Go into power management and up CPU minimum processor state, if I remember right you want to move it from 5% to 30%.
I5 and better do not need this, but I3's do and makes them feel way more snappy.
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Offline yui

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #18 on: Thu, 21 January 2021, 01:18:10 »

That machine that is stuck in a update loop, just run update troubleshooter and it should find the issue for the most part - also you can go in and remove the last update that is causing an issue.
that was a few months ago, it is resolved, just an example of what 10 is best at :)

Not sure if this still works on10 but does on 7 and 8.

Go into power management and up CPU minimum processor state, if I remember right you want to move it from 5% to 30%.
I5 and better do not need this, but I3's do and makes them feel way more snappy.
already done :) 100% on AC 50% on battery, did reduce the battery life from 12h to about 7 on a charge but yeah, faster
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Offline Leslieann

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #19 on: Thu, 21 January 2021, 04:24:13 »
You don't need 100%, shouldn't need more than 30, maaaaybe 50.
Should retain most if not all the speed and bring battery life back up, as well as go easier on your fan.
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Offline yui

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #20 on: Thu, 21 January 2021, 04:41:28 »
You don't need 100%, shouldn't need more than 30, maaaaybe 50.
Should retain most if not all the speed and bring battery life back up, as well as go easier on your fan.
i did not really experiment, i just saw that setting, put it to 100% instead of 5%, see that it seems to make it run better, did not touch it again :) but yeah next time i go into the settings i may go a bit lower if you say it is better
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Offline Darthbaggins

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #21 on: Thu, 21 January 2021, 08:24:58 »
That machine that is stuck in a update loop, just run update troubleshooter and it should find the issue for the most part - also you can go in and remove the last update that is causing an issue.
Yes this works, but do you really expect grandma to be able to do that? Basic diagnostic tools shouldn't be hidden, and this is basic. You should be able to walk someone through it over the phone in a matter of a couple minutes at worst.


my work PC is an i3-3110, worked slightly better on 7 but once i removed all the bloat from 10 it still runs rather well
Not sure if this still works on10 but does on 7 and 8.

Go into power management and up CPU minimum processor state, if I remember right you want to move it from 5% to 30%.
I5 and better do not need this, but I3's do and makes them feel way more snappy.

Nope usually I get the phone call and have to do it on site for Grandma (or many other family members), lol.
But no it should be easier to access this other than digging through the settings menu where it's buried.

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Offline Bitdrive

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #22 on: Sun, 31 January 2021, 20:01:19 »
Actually full resetting and wiping maybe once every two years, though I do reset the pc with the bout in windows tools about every 6months or right around where you start to feel the windows rot

Offline phinix

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #23 on: Mon, 01 February 2021, 08:09:59 »
Ah, yeah, this was a ritual back in the days:)
I remember re-installing Windows every 5-6 months in 90s.
I also did that to all people I knew with PCs, all friends of family etc
Truly ritual :)

Now I don't even remember when I installed my Win10 which I'm using. Files show March 2019 - I think it was after something crashed and couldn't recover it.
I just don't like to do that with all the games installed - pulling out all save files from god knows where, as apart from Steam, other games keep save files in their own "secret" folders:)
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Offline micmil

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #24 on: Sat, 06 February 2021, 11:23:37 »
I reinstall Windows every single time I build a new PC.

So, every few years or so. Because what kind of ungodly ass-hell stupid do you have to unleash to hash a Windows installation?

Offline fohat.digs

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #25 on: Sat, 06 February 2021, 11:55:36 »

save files in their own "secret" folders


How many users have condemned programmers to eternal damnation for this cute little trick, down through the years?
"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
- Jon Stewart 2024-03-28

Offline phinix

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #26 on: Sun, 07 February 2021, 07:09:56 »

save files in their own "secret" folders


How many users have condemned programmers to eternal damnation for this cute little trick, down through the years?

Definitely myself:)
I say millions:)
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Offline noisyturtle

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #27 on: Sat, 13 February 2021, 19:59:33 »
Ya know, maybe I should do a full reinstall. I haven't done that since I first built this rig and put Win7 on here.
It might fix some of the constant never ending literally every goddamn day issues this pos os puts me through. Some brand new way to make something slower or broken, multiple times a week ever since switching to 10.

Offline fohat.digs

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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #28 on: Sat, 13 February 2021, 20:50:11 »
Going beyond 3-5 years is asking for trouble.
"It turns out that for a decade, whenever Trump wanted to get a loan, or make a deal, he would inflate the value of his real estate. For instance, suggesting that his 11,000-square foot penthouse was a 30,000-square foot penthouse.
And the attorney general of New York knew that Trump's property values were inflated because when it came time to pay taxes, Trump undervalued the very same properties.
It was all part of a very sophisticated real estate practice known as “lying.”
- Jon Stewart 2024-03-28

Offline micmil

  • Posts: 67
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #29 on: Sun, 14 February 2021, 09:29:25 »
Ya know, maybe I should do a full reinstall. I haven't done that since I first built this rig and put Win7 on here.
It might fix some of the constant never ending literally every goddamn day issues this pos os puts me through. Some brand new way to make something slower or broken, multiple times a week ever since switching to 10.

It sounds to me like you don't know how to de-turd Windows properly.
- Turn off Cortana
- Turn off all the telemetry you can
- Turn off Windows Search Indexer (then **** it to hell with a pointy stick)
- Make sure your power settings are set for performance
- Run msconfig and google each service that runs at startup. Disable any of them that aren't 100% necessary.
- Bring up Task Manager and check the Startup tab. There's every possibility you have things loading and don't even know it because that's how standard Windows install rolls.

This is about an hour's worth of fiddling but once all of this is sorted you won't be able to blame anything on Windows... it'll be your own damn fault.  :))

Offline powwu

  • Posts: 240
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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #30 on: Sun, 14 February 2021, 09:38:44 »
Never. I keep windows in a VM where it belongs.


Offline Leslieann

  • * Elevated Elder
  • Posts: 4513
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #31 on: Sun, 14 February 2021, 20:41:05 »
- Turn off all the telemetry you can
- Make sure your power settings are set for performance
- Run msconfig and google each service that runs at startup. Disable any of them that aren't 100% necessary.
This is about an hour's worth of fiddling but once all of this is sorted you won't be able to blame anything on Windows... it'll be your own damn fault.  :))
Advanced telemetry only adds another 1% data collection and what it does collect is not really anything to worry about compared to what basic collects. This is MS giving you some semblance of control to pacify you. It's like asking for your name, birthdate, photo, phone #, SSN, address, drivers license number, license plate number but asking permission for your zip code.

Performance mode changes how a system sleeps, not actually performs.

Shutting down services is a good way to soft brick a system.
Not only can what they do be misleading but MS has purposely tied some together and changed them in ways you may not predict or compared to when that guide was made. Doing this made sense when MS wasn't actively working to hide what they system does and people used severely under-powered rigs like Win XP and Win7 but today you're most often better off not bothering.

Most of this stuff was great ideas on older Windows systems but by Win8 trying to kill off all this background stuff is either of little value (on purpose) and at times detrimental.
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Offline micmil

  • Posts: 67
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #32 on: Sun, 14 February 2021, 21:09:05 »
Advanced telemetry only adds another 1% data collection and what it does collect is not really anything to worry about compared to what basic collects. This is MS giving you some semblance of control to pacify you. It's like asking for your name, birthdate, photo, phone #, SSN, address, drivers license number, license plate number but asking permission for your zip code.

Performance mode changes how a system sleeps, not actually performs.

Shutting down services is a good way to soft brick a system.
Not only can what they do be misleading but MS has purposely tied some together and changed them in ways you may not predict or compared to when that guide was made. Doing this made sense when MS wasn't actively working to hide what they system does and people used severely under-powered rigs like Win XP and Win7 but today you're most often better off not bothering.

Most of this stuff was great ideas on older Windows systems but by Win8 trying to kill off all this background stuff is either of little value (on purpose) and at times detrimental.

- Any telemetry is CPU cycles wasted on crap that isn't running the programs you want your PC to run. I don't care what anyone collects, I care how it impacts my system and if that's a non-zero number I'm going to make it zero.

- I'm aware of what performance mode is. I'm also aware of the endless issues people have that are related to sleep being broken as hell on basically every computer that's ever existed. This isn't just a Windows thing, it permeates MacOS and Linux as well (I'll wager BSD's have problems too but I've never really used one). Sleep may have mattered in the days when CPU's guzzled electricity and hard drive life was limited in terms of revolutions but now it's completely pointless and causes far more issues than it solves.

- What part of "google" did you not understand? :)) I guarantee you that if you checked your services you'd have a ton of crap running that you had no clue was even installed, let alone currently slurping cycles. Get rid of everything that does not actually run your computer. This has nothing to do with legit and necessary system services and everything to do with the litany of update managers, license servers, and straight up malware that programs install and don't subsequently remove when you uninstall it.

No one of these things will be a magic bullet. Each one is a tiny slice of problems taken off the top and thrown in the dumpster. Start off with fewer things that can cause problems and you'll end up with fewer problems.

Offline Leslieann

  • * Elevated Elder
  • Posts: 4513
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #33 on: Sun, 14 February 2021, 22:22:31 »
Any telemetry is CPU cycles wasted on crap that isn't running the programs you want your PC to run. I don't care what anyone collects, I care how it impacts my system and if that's a non-zero number I'm going to make it zero.

- I'm aware of what performance mode is. I'm also aware of the endless issues people have that are related to sleep being broken as hell on basically every computer that's ever existed. This isn't just a Windows thing, it permeates MacOS and Linux as well (I'll wager BSD's have problems too but I've never really used one). Sleep may have mattered in the days when CPU's guzzled electricity and hard drive life was limited in terms of revolutions but now it's completely pointless and causes far more issues than it solves.

- What part of "google" did you not understand? :)) I guarantee you that if you checked your services you'd have a ton of crap running that you had no clue was even installed, let alone currently slurping cycles. Get rid of everything that does not actually run your computer. This has nothing to do with legit and necessary system services and everything to do with the litany of update managers, license servers, and straight up malware that programs install and don't subsequently remove when you uninstall it.

No one of these things will be a magic bullet. Each one is a tiny slice of problems taken off the top and thrown in the dumpster. Start off with fewer things that can cause problems and you'll end up with fewer problems.
You can't reduce telemetry cpu to zero because it wipes out so many sub systems, like driver finder and updater.  Telemetry is built into every subsystem. Again, you're doing almost nothing using basic over advanced, it's a placebo.

BSD doesn't have sleep issues because what it runs on is so limited, so much so that even the NAS and firewall systems that run on it are switching to Linux to escape that issue. As for the rest a LOT of power issues actually come from Bios and as much as I hate to say it, lower end hardware.  Going from garbage to quality stuff really does equate to fewer issues.

Yes, I saw the Google part, and what part of outdated info did you not understand. every major update to Windows brings changes as to how things are handled, MS does this on purpose to keep people from tinkering. Some of the settings we used to disable when Win10 was less than 2 years old will now brick the OS.  Any guide telling you what service or registry does what and what is safe to remove MUST be based on the the version you're using, and pray MS doesn't alter it later. They can and have done so in the past.


All your tweaks add up to how much performance? Ever actually benchmark to see what the increase is?
If you're lucky all these tweaks will add up to a 3% boost, but I doubt it. Meanwhile you're living life on the edge, trying to eek this out. Unless your system is pretty under powered you will never notice it.

Stop thinking clock cycles, that's like checking the couch for pennies to pay rent, look at the system impact. If an extra 3% of a single core on a modern CPU is impacting actual real world performance that you can measure without a benchmark you have much bigger problems.
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Offline noisyturtle

  • * Exalted Elder
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  • comfortably numb
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #34 on: Mon, 15 February 2021, 18:41:51 »
MS has purposely tied some together and changed them in ways you may not predict

I deeply hate so much mow MS builds their modern OS (basically just 10) this way. With each iteration giving the user less control but presenting the illusion of choice. Giving updates you have to take that backdoor an unrelated patch. Tying programs that have nothing to do with each other together and dependent. Forcing cpu draining bloatware that does nothing but spy on you that you cannot shutdown or remove. And when someone does figure out how to remove some data stealing, memory intensive, or cpu draining application they sneak it into a later WinUpdate as a necessary update.

It is so ****ing obvious what MS is doing, and it really makes me mad. Especially that to the general consumer they don't see any difference because they don't have the technical know-how so MS keeps pushing more and more intrusive and intensive background apps that operate without permission.

XP felt like the last free Windows environment, even end-life 7 started getting big brothery. Nowhere near as bad and blatant as 10 though.
« Last Edit: Mon, 15 February 2021, 18:44:11 by noisyturtle »

Offline SBJ

  • Posts: 1191
  • Location: Denmark / The city.
  • Tactile pls
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #35 on: Mon, 15 February 2021, 21:48:34 »
Just formatted the pc yesterday - switched from Danish to English while I was doing it. So much nicer.
The last installation lasted about 10 months.

Offline funkmon

  • Posts: 451
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #36 on: Mon, 15 February 2021, 23:21:46 »
I read a poll recently that essentially said that Danish was the least liked accent in English. Apparently it's the same way in Danish! Haha!

Offline Sniping

  • Posts: 861
  • Location: California
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #37 on: Tue, 16 February 2021, 13:06:01 »
pretty much never. had an install that was just completely corrupted the other week and i did a clean install but that was probably the first time in 10 years.

Offline Kavik

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 819
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #38 on: Tue, 16 February 2021, 13:16:48 »
I read a poll recently that essentially said that Danish was the least liked accent in English. Apparently it's the same way in Danish! Haha!

Really? Half the Danes I've heard sound almost like native American English speakers, except a bit deeper (exception: Lars Mikkelsen sounds 100% British). The other half just sound Dutch, which is very intelligible.
Maybe they're waiting for gasmasks and latex to get sexy again.

The world has become a weird place.

Offline micmil

  • Posts: 67
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #39 on: Tue, 16 February 2021, 19:18:35 »
Any telemetry is CPU cycles wasted on crap that isn't running the programs you want your PC to run. I don't care what anyone collects, I care how it impacts my system and if that's a non-zero number I'm going to make it zero.

- I'm aware of what performance mode is. I'm also aware of the endless issues people have that are related to sleep being broken as hell on basically every computer that's ever existed. This isn't just a Windows thing, it permeates MacOS and Linux as well (I'll wager BSD's have problems too but I've never really used one). Sleep may have mattered in the days when CPU's guzzled electricity and hard drive life was limited in terms of revolutions but now it's completely pointless and causes far more issues than it solves.

- What part of "google" did you not understand? :)) I guarantee you that if you checked your services you'd have a ton of crap running that you had no clue was even installed, let alone currently slurping cycles. Get rid of everything that does not actually run your computer. This has nothing to do with legit and necessary system services and everything to do with the litany of update managers, license servers, and straight up malware that programs install and don't subsequently remove when you uninstall it.

No one of these things will be a magic bullet. Each one is a tiny slice of problems taken off the top and thrown in the dumpster. Start off with fewer things that can cause problems and you'll end up with fewer problems.
You can't reduce telemetry cpu to zero because it wipes out so many sub systems, like driver finder and updater.  Telemetry is built into every subsystem. Again, you're doing almost nothing using basic over advanced, it's a placebo.

BSD doesn't have sleep issues because what it runs on is so limited, so much so that even the NAS and firewall systems that run on it are switching to Linux to escape that issue. As for the rest a LOT of power issues actually come from Bios and as much as I hate to say it, lower end hardware.  Going from garbage to quality stuff really does equate to fewer issues.

Yes, I saw the Google part, and what part of outdated info did you not understand. every major update to Windows brings changes as to how things are handled, MS does this on purpose to keep people from tinkering. Some of the settings we used to disable when Win10 was less than 2 years old will now brick the OS.  Any guide telling you what service or registry does what and what is safe to remove MUST be based on the the version you're using, and pray MS doesn't alter it later. They can and have done so in the past.


All your tweaks add up to how much performance? Ever actually benchmark to see what the increase is?
If you're lucky all these tweaks will add up to a 3% boost, but I doubt it. Meanwhile you're living life on the edge, trying to eek this out. Unless your system is pretty under powered you will never notice it.

Stop thinking clock cycles, that's like checking the couch for pennies to pay rent, look at the system impact. If an extra 3% of a single core on a modern CPU is impacting actual real world performance that you can measure without a benchmark you have much bigger problems.

You're taking my "cpu cycles" comment far too literally.

The important thing is reducing the number of programs that are running. Everything that's running is another possible problem and in the case of things like Windows Search Indexer it's something that can make it impossible to even use your computer if it decides to crazygonuts.

You're acting like there's nothing you can do to improve Windows performance so you shouldn't even bother. This kind of misinformation is why people end up hating Windows. Stay on top of your system, control everything you can, don't worry about crap you can't change. In other words: Treat it like you'd treat any other OS.

Offline yui

  • Posts: 1082
  • Location: 127.0.0.1 (in azerty)
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #40 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 03:45:01 »
You're taking my "cpu cycles" comment far too literally.

The important thing is reducing the number of programs that are running. Everything that's running is another possible problem and in the case of things like Windows Search Indexer it's something that can make it impossible to even use your computer if it decides to crazygonuts.

You're acting like there's nothing you can do to improve Windows performance so you shouldn't even bother. This kind of misinformation is why people end up hating Windows. Stay on top of your system, control everything you can, don't worry about crap you can't change. In other words: Treat it like you'd treat any other OS.
i am sorry but no, you can't treat windows like any other OS, windows fights against you for control like regularly it will switch my default browser and pdf reader back to Edge, i have a licensed version of Adobe acrobat, why would i ever use edge for pdf? it also will re-enable telemetry and hide options from you, and re-enable the "Let windows choose the best printer" option, that fails to use the right one about 100% of the time on every update on my PC. Windows 10 is the only OS actively fighting its users, and it is why i hate it
vi vi vi - the roman number of the beast (Plan9 fortune)

Offline Leslieann

  • * Elevated Elder
  • Posts: 4513
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #41 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 09:04:55 »
Everything that's running is another possible problem and in the case of things like Windows Search Indexer it's something that can make it impossible to even use your computer if it decides to crazygonuts.

You're acting like there's nothing you can do to improve Windows performance so you shouldn't even bother. This kind of misinformation is why people end up hating Windows. Stay on top of your system, control everything you can, don't worry about crap you can't change. In other words: Treat it like you'd treat any other OS.
I'm going to have to agree with Yui on this,
You think you're preventing problem when all you're doing is fighting the OS all the time.
What you experienced was very likely a one time issue and your solution was to disable it permanently, what happens when your tweak causes it to crash next time?  You just said it was all too integrated, which is EXACTLY what we're saying except you're trying to cut parts out and make it more reliable. In what way does that make sense? 

"Treat it like any other OS", you can't, that's the whole point.

If windows works for you, great, keep using it, but don't fool yourself into thinking people hate Win10 because of misinformation that's absolutely silly, we've all used the OS, it's not like it's not pre-installed on nearly every single computer sold. Do you think we've never experienced the joy(?) of Windows and only ever heard rumors of it? And what are you afraid of, someone might decide to try a different OS? The horror!
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Offline micmil

  • Posts: 67
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #42 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 10:43:19 »
And yet I never have anything nagging me or trying to reset what programs I use. I have zero stability issues, no problems stemming from updates, all because I did a bit of homework and found what can and can't be safely removed from startup, services, and straight up deleted.

Of course you're going to agree with someone that's already agreeing with you. Have fun. Cuddle. I'm no longer in the business of talking to walls.
« Last Edit: Wed, 17 February 2021, 11:25:42 by micmil »

Offline tp4tissue

  • * Destiny Supporter
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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #43 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 10:52:57 »
Do you think we've never experienced the joy(?) of Windows and only ever heard rumors of it? And what are you afraid of, someone might decide to try a different OS? The horror!



The Joy of Windows XP is real. The Joy of Windows 3.1 is real.   Every other OS sux..

If it weren't for all these stupid new applications, Tp4 would still use XP.

Offline SBJ

  • Posts: 1191
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  • Tactile pls
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #44 on: Wed, 17 February 2021, 11:24:36 »
Do you think we've never experienced the joy(?) of Windows and only ever heard rumors of it? And what are you afraid of, someone might decide to try a different OS? The horror!



The Joy of Windows XP is real. The Joy of Windows 3.1 is real.   Every other OS sux..

If it weren't for all these stupid new applications, Tp4 would still use XP.

Old school dude, I like it.
I honestly don't care. I've never had a problem with my windows installation. I don't know if I'm doing something right or it's just dumb luck, but never had 1 issue.
I've fixed a lot of issues though, so I know that windows tends to **** up.

Offline Kavik

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 819
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #45 on: Sat, 27 March 2021, 15:36:01 »
I think it may finally be time for me to do this. Almost every time I open Windows Explorer, it takes several minutes trying to load the thumbnails for files, and, when I right-click a file and select "Open with", the window and right-click menu freeze and Windows Explorer goes into "not responding". The only solution is to restart explorer.exe.

I also get a delay when typing in webpages sometimes, which may just be from having a million Chrome tabs open at once, but it's not close to maxing memory.
Maybe they're waiting for gasmasks and latex to get sexy again.

The world has become a weird place.

Offline Leslieann

  • * Elevated Elder
  • Posts: 4513
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #46 on: Sat, 27 March 2021, 22:09:37 »
I think it may finally be time for me to do this. Almost every time I open Windows Explorer, it takes several minutes trying to load the thumbnails for files, and, when I right-click a file and select "Open with", the window and right-click menu freeze and Windows Explorer goes into "not responding". The only solution is to restart explorer.exe.

If this is a on spinner drive this can also indicate a drive failing and reloading Windows on it can cause it to finally bite the dust.
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Offline noisyturtle

  • * Exalted Elder
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Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #47 on: Sat, 27 March 2021, 22:18:28 »
I love how Windows 10 breaks something just to force you to take and update or reset. I see what you're doing you absolute prick of an OS. Stop holding my PC hostage and demanding update resets. **** you buddy.

Offline Kavik

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 819
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #48 on: Sat, 27 March 2021, 23:41:00 »
I think it may finally be time for me to do this. Almost every time I open Windows Explorer, it takes several minutes trying to load the thumbnails for files, and, when I right-click a file and select "Open with", the window and right-click menu freeze and Windows Explorer goes into "not responding". The only solution is to restart explorer.exe.

If this is a on spinner drive this can also indicate a drive failing and reloading Windows on it can cause it to finally bite the dust.

I have two SSDs (one with Windows and one with games) and a HDD (with photos and other files). This happens even when opening my downloads folder on the C drive or connecting my camera to download pictures from it. I suppose I could disconnect the HDD and see if that resolves it. Either way, backing everything up sounds like a good idea right about now.
Maybe they're waiting for gasmasks and latex to get sexy again.

The world has become a weird place.

Offline Darthbaggins

  • Posts: 644
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  • PC Cannibal
Re: How Often Do You Perform a Clean Installation of Windows?
« Reply #49 on: Mon, 29 March 2021, 13:57:31 »
Due to the age of the thread, I'm surprised you haven't backed it up by now.

 bkrownd:"Those damned rubber chiclet keys are the devil's nipples."   >:D