Clean install every year or two?

Lemur said:

Nate, I wonder why you weren't able to install from your image?

This is my main concern. It makes me wonder if i have a hardware problem, but it's been good since the clean install.

zigzag3143 said:

nate42nd said:

My system wouldn't start today and I tried a "startup repair" to no avail. A system restore to no avail, and an image recovery. The recovery program wouldn't even detect the image on my external eSATA drive. I didn't know what to do. I tried everything I have learned on this site.

I have had an SSD for more than a year and had turned off superfetch, prefetch and a whole bunch of services, modified the pagefile and had programs spread all over 3 drives. I think my Windows install just "gave up"

I ended up doing a clean install and all is well. Luckily I had all data on different drives so I didn't loose much. I just use my SSD for Windows. There may have been a solution, but sometimes.....does one simply have to do a clean install every year or two? I have heard people say this is the case and with all my system mods....I think it was the case with me....especially with my very complicated system mods.

If anyone has experience with this let me know. Thanks.

P.S. I have been away from the forums for far too long. I need to get back to work helping people. Sorry for not being here to help for a few months. I have been busy with photography and video with my new Canon 500D and 7D. It takes all of my time

I too do extensive system mods. I also find a clean install is needed but in my case it is much more frequent. I do a clean install about every three months

Thanks for the reply. I thought the many mods would catch up with me sooner than a year. I hope that's all it was. I don't understand why it wouldnt detect my image however. I tried it on another system and the external was fine and the image was there....

marsmimar said:

This might be a no-brainer type question. Hope you don't mind. My laptop has a manufacturer's recovery partition that let's me restore my machine to a like new condition. Is this type of install as good as a traditional clean install using an installation disk? (Aside from having to remove the manufacturer's crapware that also gets installed.) Thanks for any advice pro or con. And my apologies if this should be a separate question. If so, I'll delete and repost.

I agree with the great advice gregrocker gave you. Find an installer disk or make a USB flash drive installer. I have a video on YouTube under the same user name on how to do it. It's not too hard if you have a windows 7 disk.....don't know about having an OEM one though. It might take some more steps.

Actually, for folks with an OEM load, I generally back up the activation license files and data, and do a clean installation including replacing the OEM licensing data back down (thus re-activating the install). I make a system image backup of that once all of their basic software is installed and configured (not the stuff that updates regularly like flash, pdf reader software, etc), and they use that to restore when necessary.

To answer the original question on this thread, I try to avoid reinstalls whenever possible - I have had multiple Win7 RTM installations on many of my machines since July and August of last year, and I've not had to reinstall even one.

Hello Nate, glad to see you back around.

If you can cut the OEM garbage the recovery will be a fresh install that first wipes whatever you have on now to see that done. You would first want to backup anything you want from the C volume before using it for that reason. But it's a preactivated fresh install seen.

Bare Foot Kid said:

Hello Nate, glad to see you back around.

Thanks BFK, I have missed all of you. I have been sooooo busy. I will stop in more often. It appears I may have to diagnose a hardware problem if these issues continue. That wil keep me even busier. haha

I'm not sure how to diagnose a CPU or motherboard problem. I can test RAM and the PSU, but if it's a board or CPU.....I don't know how to diagnose that stuff...but that's for another thread.

Good to be back.

I shopped around a bit and located a few motherboard testers. You can find some with the 4 digit displays good for both laptops and desktops alike.

To see how one of those looks, PCI Test Card, PC Analyzer, Motherboard Test Card

I didn't pay anywhere that price for a few on EBay however while the one shown there offers a bit more! Once you power up with it in a pci slot you simply look up the code in reference booklet that comes along with it. The code will point to the part of the board like bios to indicate where any fault is found if one is present.

Night Hawk said:

I shopped around a bit and located a few motherboard testers. You can find some with the 4 digit displays good for both laptops and desktops alike.

To see how one of those looks, PCI Test Card, PC Analyzer, Motherboard Test Card

I didn't pay anywhere that price for a few on EBay however while the one shown there offers a bit more! Once you power up with it in a pci slot you simply look up the code in reference booklet that comes along with it. The code will point to the part of the board like bios to indicate where any fault is found if one is present.

Thanks Night Hawk I didn't know these things existed. Maybe I could use one.