well, on my main hard drive, i reinstall windows about once every year and a half. so far i just had to reinstall vista for a little f-up i made, but its all good now. runs fine, minimal software, everything i need is on there. just not the printer

Almost 40% do this once a month??

Unlike so many forum participants, I don't have just this one computer to take care of.
I have hundreds of customers, some of them corporate Hq's.

Telling them they have to reinstall their OS several times a year would get me lynched.

So I set them up with a weekly Cleanup routine and Ghost backup.
With proper maintenance, any system should run for years without ever having to be rebuilt.

I try to see each PC twice a year for cleaning and updating.

Keeping tower computers UP off of the floor and providing coolers for the HD's has cut down on system crashes immensely.

Success in running hundreds of computers with a minimum of problems is about 10% technology and 90% common sense.

Remember, the only bad backup is that one you decided NOT to do.

Good Luck,
Andromeda43

I prefer leaving the backup image on my other hard drive, much faster. I prefer not to burn it into a DVD disk, because I tend to update the image sometimes, and its much quicker when you reimage it from a drive than a CD. Eliminates the 10 minute wait (On Acronis True Image)

I don't like Norton Ghost 9.0, can't say about the previous versions. It is so slow and unreliable, one time I reimaged using Norton Ghost 9.0, and the partition wouldn't even boot. Bloody POS software.

About every three months or whenever I screw it up.

Must be using 98SE...................

every so often, or a new update or i get another computer and its easier to reinstall windows than let windows detect the new hardware

Err.. How is that image possible?, There needs to be atleast some form of non-moveable files in there.

On closer inspection, it looks like jipped.

This morning LOL

probably restore from image every 2 weeks depending on average, reinstall mainly due to new drivers and nlite etc about once a month. takes about 5 minutes and 30 minutes respectively.

No re-installation on a monthly basis . I ghosted my pc to external media . Futhermore I have imaging software on a startup that recovers the system to a previous state (True Image)

I have 5 stage ghost images for activation, updates, drivers, utilities and applications

I reghost updates and install new updates and then reghost it back to external media.

Always wait for the new service pack to re-install the operating system from scratch

Do npt forget the xp regiistry patch (status bar and user Windows 200 style accounts)

On a monthly basis i do a full blown udpate to see which KB's has changed from the previous months

Re-installation procedures takes 35 mins but ghosting 7 mins same configuration

I re-install at least once a month on my personal computer but my sister f**ks her pc up often so i do hers once a week

I dunno... I've never had problems with it >_>

This PC is using 98se and hasn't been reinstalled since I set it up over a year ago.
My other PC is also using 98se and not been reinstalled since '99.. 7 years ago.

*shrugs* Your milage may vary >_>

Once a month or so. XP is about that (because it is the worst OS ever) and Vista is usually just when a new build comes out that I can legally get (once a month or so, although no new builds are coming out besides 6000). I can easily get away with 3-6 on Ubuntu.

The same polls keep coming up again. Once a year. Maybe less.

I do it about every three Months or when I install new hardware.

Reinstalled the my previous Win98 system 5 years ago. My current WinXP system has worked for a year now and I'm not going to reinstall it anytime soon.

It's a completely different case with other peoples computers. Thank god none of them happened to have RAID on board.

Voted for 1 year because I do not use imaging software, only backup individual files on DVDs. I feel there is no need to restore an entire partition. My backup also allows to restore the OS on another machine which happen to have the same motherboard.

I have only had to reinstall Windows twice ever. One was for a motherboard replacement, one was because I installed MS DOS 5.0 on top of Windows 95. The only other time was when a hard drive died and that is a no-brainer. My current PC has not had Windows reinstalled since its first time in 2001.

One week ago i reinstalled for third time my windows 98 SE partition for a little problem with RP 5 and kernel update (now im using RP7).
Wind*ws 2000 almost not need reinstall, only repair and a service pack reinstall

none of the above?

I use a program called deepfreeze to keep my computer clean. I have a few folders that I can still write to, so that if I come across something I want to keep, I put it in one of those folders (normally something besides program files, windows, docs/settings, or other sys folders). Also, this way, I only have my AV monitoring those folders and the temp directory for my browser instead of the whole PC. MUCH more efficient It was worth the...ummm what's that word...oh yeah, purchase!

On systems with more than one HDD or partition I keep the boot drive frozen and then everything else is thawed.

I haven't had to reinstall for quite some time...

Take care with "rompehielo". An anti-freeze hack(and made in peru º_0). Is too common in this land.