How often do you reinstall your OS (Operating System) ?

Back in my pre windows 7 days and before helpful forums like this I would be reinstalling my OS every 2 or 3 months either some major system app like widows media center quit working properly or I Couldn't use system restore to fix my problem of the day I would have to do a recovery taking 3 more days to reinstall everything (single OS). Since Windows 7 I have learned the value of using an image to back up both OS. Using triple protection such as windows image backup, Acronis True Image WD Edition after having to buy another USB External hard drive & throw in Paragon backup & recovery for good measure reduces a week and half's work to about 3 hours

I just make sure everything works before I make a new Image and a bonus of making more than one image is I can go backward in time if I am not happy with my current setup or if one of the 3 backups doesn't work plus I do not need to reactivate widows or other software that may require activation or only allow limited activations as they were already activated before the image was created.

whenever i mess up something lol thats me

Once a year right about this time, when little bugs have accumulated from all my poking around. This time it was primarily an excuse to move to Win7 from XP.

i average about every 6 months or so, i like that fresh formatted feeling

I reintalled my OS about once a year. I was doing this with Windows XP, and i might keep doing it with Windows 7.

This way it can get rid of problems that annoy me but do not effect the OS operations. It also gives me a chance to "clean house" of files and programs that i no longer use. It also gets rid of any leftover files that might get missed after i uninstall something. You might be suprised a how many files are still left behind after an unintall. Most are hidden deep within the registry, and normally would end up causing more problems manually removing them

Also, i have noticed that many downloaded programs off the interent may not allways be kept up to date. This way i re-downloaded everything i use and normally get the most recent version.