How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

For those that do a clean install of the OS and every program, how often will you do that? Do you just do it when you notice a significant slower PC? Or do you do it say a set 6 months or 1 year?

Not talking about a ghost image or a repair disc that has your image.
I just did that using Win 7 system restore and it just does not seem as good as going all out and doing the whole system programs and everything.

What are your thoughts?

Re: How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

I have one workstation which I upgraded twice over last five years (including changing CPU, motherboard, RAM and GPU), and shockingly I didn't even have to reinstall my Win XP once. Everything is a blast, even though I also constantly install and uninstall various kinds of software.

The difference perhaps is that I don't use antivirus software (a good Agnitum Outpost Firewall is on however).

I know it goes against a lot of security and maintenance advice, but my experience has been nothing short of positive.

Re: How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

I use to do it about once a year or so.

In the past, my editing computer was always stand alone... meaning never hooked up to the internet. So I never had any antivirus of anything ever installed on it.

Times have changed a lot in just the past 4 or 5 years though with super high speed internet really taking off to the masses combined with the ability to upload large video files in very short timeframes. So, now my editing computer is online... but I'm considering going back to an offline system.

Re: How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

With the early versions of Win XP, it was about every six months. After I built a new system in 2006, I never had a problem. I've even moved that hard disk disk over into my newest editing workstation and found that WinXP still runs fine. I built the new system when Win 7 came out and installed it to a new hard drive. I have been mostly running under Win 7 since then. Still, I occasionally need to boot back into XP. When I do it runs fine. CS4, for example, just as it always did.

With Win 7, I've had two reinstalls, both after it hung on a reboot from a Windows update. These may have been caused by the Windows update or by a problem with the Norton Internet Security 2009 or a combination of them..

The first time it happened, a few weeks after getting everything installed under Win 7 on the new editing workstation. I found that the update had erased or corrupted all of my system restore points and that Windows still hung on boot-up even when I went to the disk image restoration. I reformatted the Win 7 drive and reinstalled everything from scratch.

I had another instance of this about a month ago. Again, Windows hung on a reboot from an update. I could not even get to safe mode in Win 7,. My restore points were gone, and restoration from the back-up only allowed me to get to safe mode. Between Win 7 safe mode and being able to boot to XP, I was able to verify the absence of hardware problems. So, I just re-installed Win 7over the existing version and then reinstalled all of my apps. Norton gave me a free upgrade to the 2011 version of Internet Securiity. The system now seems a bit faster than it used to and PPro CS5 definitely runs much better. As does Cineform NeoHD. There does not seem to be any difference in encoding for DVDs or authoring in Encore.. So, I'm not sure I see the need for periodic reinstallation, but I've done it twice.

I also have a heavily used laptop which has been running Vista 64 for three years without reinstallation. It has always worked fine.

Re: How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

Jay, Norton is your problem, dump it. You may need a clean install to make sure there are no pieces of Norton still left. Use all the Windows security and it will run great in Win 7 and its all free.

I have Win7 on the PC I use for internet access, email etc. It has all the free Windows security. I make sure I empty my temp files regularly ( run %temp% and delete folder contents). My editing PC is Vista 64 and has no security on it at all connected to internet only for updates. Still do the temp folder cleaning every few days and has run since I built it several years ago with no problems at all. This through several updates of all the editing software. Just to make me happy I do run Trendmicro HouseCall every few months.

For theWin7 update issue you may have been a little hasty in powering down/up the system after the update. Certainly the last Win7 update took a long time to automatically reboot my system. I have learned not to second guess what is going on and just wait for it to respond on automatic restart. For this last Win7 update it took over 10 mins to come back and reload.

Ron Evans

Re: How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

Ron --

thanks for the advice.

The point about not powering down prematurely is a good one but was not the culprit in my case. Both times, I left the machine sitting for well over an hour before powering down.

I'm pretty sure that the problems I had were related to Windows updates because I have had intermittent issues where the computer will reboot for a Windows Update and either hang or else makes my system unstable so that PPro, Cineform and Encore randomly locked up. I've had seven or eight instances of this. Except for the two instances I've mentioned where I did a rebuild, I have always been able to fix things by rolling back to a previous restore point and then skipping whichever Windows Update seems to have caused the problem. A later update usually avoids the problem. I suppose it is possible that NIS may have caused on contributed to file corruption in a download.

The older Norton (2009 NIS) was indeed problemmatic in other ways. It could cause CS5 to randomly pause for several minutes when Norton decided it needed to do something. I spent hours on the phone with Norton support and that may be one of the reasons I was given the free update to the new NIS 2011.

So far, NIS 2011 seems much better behaved than the older one. It is noticably less of a resource hog. To be sure, I mostly run my editing workstation with the ethernet cable disconnected (no wireless either) and often switch the antivirus off for editing sessions. Still, I am too paranoid to connect to the Internet without WinPatrol, some very strong antivirus and anti-malware software, a software firewall in addition to my hardware firewall --- kind of a belt, suspenders and kevlar vest approach.

I appreciate your information about the Windows Essentials package and I have looked into dumping Norton. My research turned up complaints that NIS adversely affects Vegas to the point that many users recommend replacing NIS with the Windows Security Essentials. Seemed to be less of an issue for Adobe users.

Also discovered that one no longer needs to do a complete clean install to get rid of Norton. There is a downloadable Norton Removal Tool which I used before installing Norton in my last go round.

One thing that has given me pause with the Windows firewall is that I ran into difficulties connecting with my laptop when I was using Windows Firewall while rebuilidng the editing system. (I use network connections for things like passing an iso DVD image for parallel burning on an external Blue-Ray drive when I have a large run of DVDs to burn). I had trouble connecting to the laptop when I used the Windows firewall but was able to configure Norton so that I could connect with the laptop but exclude everybody else. The laptop, by the way, is running another license for the NIS and has never given me a lick of trouble in three years.

Re: How often do you run a clean install of everything? Windows OS
 

As I have said my main editing PC has no antivirus or firewall on it but of course never goes anywhere other than for updates. I have a hardware firewall router of course connected to the cable modem.

The email WEB browser PC with WIN7 does have Vegas 10 as well as Edius 5.5 on it and they run just fine with the Windows security. I have a separate 3 burner system for DVD`s so only make a master on the main PC everything else is burned on this duplicator. I think it cost me about $400 and saves a lot of problems.

I keep images using Acronis for each PC as well as a LTO3 tape backup of the editing PC after every update.

Ron Evans