Through personal experience I’ve found that Windows desktop operating systems usually last somewhere between 3-5 years before corrupting themselves beyond usability. That being said, there are literally a million and one variable that can affect that time span. If you’re the type of user who is constantly installing (and occasionally uninstalling) programs, has twenty or more programs running in your task bar and actually believe that you’re a lucky winner because a flashing banner told you so, you might not make it to three years before seeing significant slowdown. If, on the other hand, you install very few programs, defrag occasionally and update your antivirus software regularly, you might make it to or past the five-year mark.
Usually this isn’t a big problem because new versions of Windows are released every three or four years. Windows 3.1 was released in 1992; then we had Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows 2000, Windows ME (also in 2000) followed by XP in 2002. For those of us who boycotted Windows Vista (released in 2005), we’ve been running the same operating system for seven years now. I’m running Ubuntu on my upstairs workstation now, but downstairs I have things I still need Windows for, so until Windows 7 magically drops into my lap, XP it is.
I don’t remember when exactly I loaded XP on this machine, but it’s definitely hosed. At some point Internet Explorer quit working altogether, which wasn’t completely bad as I use Google Chrome almost exclusively at this point, but Windows Update (among other sites) doesn’t support Chrome, and whatever made Internet Explorer 6 break wouldn’t let me install 7 or 8 either. On top of that, critical updates have started backing up. Every morning the OS tries downloading the same critical patches over and over, always failing to successfully install them. These were two of a hundred little quirks the machine had developed over the past five or so years. It was time.
Reloading Windows, at least for me, is not the catastrophic event it once was. All my data and install files are stored on the network. After reloading and reinstalling a few apps, I’ll be back up and running. In fact, the longest part of the process is running Windows Update. Only 50 more update files before I can start re-installing apps.
And files to go, before I sleep.
And files to go, before I sleep.
Not that you do this very often, but if you have to do it more than twice, CT Update (or is it ctupdate?) is your friend. Google it. It has a front end that downloads all the service packs and updates, and a back end that you can put on CD, network, or flash media along with all the updates, then you can run one executable and it’ll install all of them. Run once, reboot, then run a second time just to be on the safe side.
I’m down to building about two systems a year, but even at that rate ctupdate saves me a bunch of time.
I used to be on the 6 month nuke/reinstall plan. There’s nothing like collecting the same songs, games, and files over and over again. And this is why I partition the HD so everything non-OS is separated from the OS itself. Oddly enough, now that I’ve done this, I don’t have to reinstall. I’ve had the same version of XP on what is now my kid’s computer running stable for about 6 years now. But it’s about time. Videos don’t play correctly, and it takes nearly 5 full minutes for the computer to load up and be ready to go, hahaha.