How long can you go before rebuild or reimage ?

Message

#1 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Jul 10, 2005 12:11 pm

We see lots of polls in here, lots of problems, and lots of different ways to solve problems. I read somewhere the suggestion from one poster that Windows be re-installed about every six months. I have statistics from three machines:

1. NetVista A30 in service since April, 2003. Never reimaged and presently no apparent reason to do so.
2. ThinkPad T41 in service since August, 2004. Not reimaged since then and presently no apparent reason to do so. This machine was purchased in January, 2004, but had an early 60 Gb that expired in the big Air Bag debacle. I didn't count that.
3. PC300PL running Windows 2000 in service since 1999. Never rebuilt, but now needs to be after 6 years and lending it to clients for widely varying uses.

verktyg · #2 Post by **verktyg** » Sun Jul 10, 2005 1:52 pm

I have everything from DOS 3.0 to Win2003 but my primary PC is running Win98SE from a March 2000 install. I have faster boxes but this is my favorite.

It's an Asus K7M with an AMD 1G T-Bird CPU. I had driver problems plus a HDD crash during the first 9 month that required restores but since then it's been running strong for thge past 4 years.

I also have a Sony 505G from 1998 with Win98 that I updated to 98SE. I haven't used it much for several years. My T20 running Win98SE dates to 2000 and except for upgrading the HDD it's never had a serious OS problem.

I have another box running on an image from my first PC, a 1995 Dell P120 with WFWG 3.11. I set it up to dual boot with NT3.51. Later I added NT4 and Win95B. I transferred the 2.1G drives to an Asus T2P4 system that I built in 1997. It started out life with a P200MMX and it topped out with an AMD K3 400 and 256MB of memory. It still runs fine although I don't use it much anymore.

I haven't had a crash with Win95B since 1999! Something to be said for T2P4s, Crucial memory and well managed system files (Faultlog.txt file results).

I've had more problems requiring reinstalls with pre SP4 NT4 than any other OS. SP6 is pretty robust.

sugo · #3 Post by **sugo** » Sun Jul 10, 2005 5:24 pm

I restore windows partition from ghost image once every a few months. It's usually after I played with new software that left a lot of junk behind.

Toe · #4 Post by **Toe** » Sun Jul 10, 2005 8:11 pm

With just about any machine I'll make a ghost image.....then try to clean up the machine. If I FUBAR something up I'm covered.....But usually I'll make a backup, then reinstall.

-Toe

snife · #5 Post by **snife** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 8:13 am

If you install loads of stuff and download a lot of junk then it can be good to reimage frequently - i definately don't go more than about 6 months but then my hdd can get to about 50% fragmented in a couple of weeks so maybe i don't treat it very well

#6 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 9:20 am

I asked this question and poll to generate some of the discussion we are having, and then more.

I have had two problems with Access Connections on my T41 that I thought might cause me to re-install. I dislike re-installing because it takes so long (all my data is safe and backed up).

1. I tried to make A/C run my Sony Ericsson Wireless card and A/C did not work right after that. Uninstalling / reinstalling did nothing. I purchased a copy of Registry First Aid (top product in the reviews) and ran that. A/C started to behave properly after that.

2. I downloaded GoRemote from dialer.net (I am a customer) and installed that. GoRemote tries to manage Wireless somewhat like Access Connections and again A/C did not work right. Even uninstalling GoRemote and uninstalling / reinstalling A/C did nothing. I ran Registry First Aid and things returned to normal.

So, in the hubub of trying new things and uninstalls, I do two things:

1. I use a Virtual Machine (VMWare) as a test bed. Easy and very fast to copy a whole machine into a test environment and delete it if it doesn't work out.
2. I continue to use Registry First Aid monthly to eliminate spurious and orphaned keys in the registy.

With these two steps, I seem to be able to avoid re-installing Windows.
... JD Hurst

verktyg · #7 Post by **verktyg** » Mon Jul 11, 2005 11:08 am

Some people must like doing reinstalls. I like to avoid doing them. They can take me 15-30 hours to get 20+ programs installed and configured. I make several Ghost images during this process in case something gets hosed.

When done, I make another Ghost backup which hopefully I'll never have to use. I back up to an external SCSI tape deck plus I just picked up an Ultrabay 2000 HDD adapter. I backed up 2 TPs yesterday using Ghost 2003 with the Ultrabay HDD. It's much faster than the tape drive.

In addition, I backup all of my data to at least one other PC on my network. I use a small shareware program called BeyondCompare to keep my files synchronized.

I use a "belt & suspenders" approach to backups. About 4 years ago, I had a HDD crash in the middle of a rush project. No problem I'll just restore from a Travan tape backup. Two or three backup tapes failed and I couldn't install the backup I did to a networked PC.

I finally found a 6 month old tape backup that I was able to restore. After that, I bought some SCSI tape drives, Ghost, DriveImage and so on. I was lucky not to loose much data.

I have a box full of HDDs that have failed over the past 5 years and I throw tapes out after 5-10 uses; I don't trust either method after my past experiences.

Thanks for the heads up on Registry First Aid.