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General discussion (archive)erase and start over your computer(57 posts)(57 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 06, 2012
how often do you guys have to completely reinstall your computers and lose all your data?
seems to happen to me every couple of years, viruses maybe?

I'm asking becuase all of sudden the other day, windows 7 64 bit stopped working, and now i can't get windows to load up! it just restarts the computer! if i try safe mode, it does the same thing! I did the startup repair program, and that didn't fix anything!
Posted September 06, 2012
Does it also load abnormally slow before crashing? If so, that's what happened to my computer when the RAM died.
Posted September 06, 2012
Catastrophic hardware failure is the only time I'm reinstalling.
Posted September 06, 2012
Maybe your hard-drive is too crowded? Have you tried deleting some stuff from it?
Posted September 06, 2012
I re install my computer roughly every once every second year, unless I've been in an experimental mode and broken something. Though I always move things away from the OS-partition that I think I'll need in the future before doing a reinstall.

Also, I've not ran the Win7 repair, but with the WinXP repair, you had the option to specify what should get fixed, which quite often was what you had to do.
Posted September 06, 2012
I reinstall windows every now and then just to keep things running smoothly, but usually I prepare my data into separate folders neatly so I can delete everything else.

Even if something went wrong though that shouldn't require a complete wipe of everything. If you just reinstall windows, sure your windows linked programs will have to be reinstalled but all your video's, music, pictures etc etc should all still be on the HDD.

As to what caused it, not a clue, but complete dataloss is really not something that is normal unless your HDD fails completely.
Posted September 06, 2012
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ashout: I'm asking becuase all of sudden the other day, windows 7 64 bit stopped working, and now i can't get windows to load up! it just restarts the computer! if i try safe mode, it does the same thing! I did the startup repair program, and that didn't fix anything!
I've seen a couple computers out here where I work do that when the Master Boot Record became damaged. If it is possible for you, you might consider trying to slave up the drive to a system that *is* able to boot. Your data may all be there, and even be usable. It's possible you just lost your boot sector or something.

Of course, I work with routers and switches, not computers and servers, so it's all just the best guess I've got at the moment. YMMV.
Posted September 06, 2012
Before I bought a new machine, I had a 5.5-year old computer on which I never once reinstalled Windows. Whenever someone has a problem with their system, people (even experienced IT people) advise them to try reinstalling windows. Not only is it a tedious process in which someone not so tech savvy might lose all data, but it is also unnecessary – like shooting an annoying mosquito with a bazooka. I have yet to encounter a problem that cannot be solved after a few minutes/hours of patient surfing through computer forums and applying solutions posted there.
Posted September 06, 2012
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ashout: how often do you guys have to completely reinstall your computers and lose all your data?
seems to happen to me every couple of years, viruses maybe?
If that's happened to you more than once, I'd really be looking into doing some backups if I were you...
Posted September 06, 2012
With Linux, not so far.

With Windows, every couple of years.

It's not so much viruses/trojans as it is badly coded software that takes it's toll over time (especially when software doesn't install/uninstall properly or when you have to reboot while some software is running and writing to the hard disk).

However, I don't lose anything worth keeping. I do backup my data :P.

I see it more as a deep reboot than Armageddon :P.
Post edited September 06, 2012 by Magnitus
Posted September 06, 2012
Nope. We're not in the XP days anymore where you had to do maintenance yourself.

I barely restart the OS (when it is required, for an update or some application that may require one), let alone reinstall it.
Posted September 06, 2012
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ashout: how often do you guys have to completely reinstall your computers and lose all your data?
seems to happen to me every couple of years, viruses maybe?

I'm asking becuase all of sudden the other day, windows 7 64 bit stopped working, and now i can't get windows to load up! it just restarts the computer! if i try safe mode, it does the same thing! I did the startup repair program, and that didn't fix anything!
I helped a friend of mine with a similar problem just a couple of days ago, there's a good chance that you can fix it, or at rescue your data.
Have you googled the error messages you get from startup repair?
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Charon121: Before I bought a new machine, I had a 5.5-year old computer on which I never once reinstalled Windows. Whenever someone has a problem with their system, people (even experienced IT people) advise them to try reinstalling windows. Not only is it a tedious process in which someone not so tech savvy might lose all data, but it is also unnecessary – like shooting an annoying mosquito with a bazooka. I have yet to encounter a problem that cannot be solved after a few minutes/hours of patient surfing through computer forums and applying solutions posted there.
Also, THIS!!
That seems to be standard advice for any problem from the retailers around here, even the ones who have their own repair department.
Post edited September 06, 2012 by Floydinizer
Posted September 06, 2012
I will re-install windows about once a year. Not because of malware, but because of efficiency. Over time windows gets bloated, especially now with the ever expanding winsxs directory.
Posted September 06, 2012
when i ran startup repair, i just let it run and then went off and got some coffee or something like that, and then when i got back it had rebooted normally again, but of course the computer wouldn't load!


so what i'm gathering is its a faulty boot directory or whatever,

or my ram went caput.

or of course viruses.

what would you guys suggest i do next? change the ram? that could be expensive, I'm not exactly in love with all the stuff i have on my hard drive. maybe i should try a reinstall first?

and how do you fix the damaged boot directory thingy?
Posted September 06, 2012
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ashout: when i ran startup repair, i just let it run and then went off and got some coffee or something like that, and then when i got back it had rebooted normally again, but of course the computer wouldn't load!


so what i'm gathering is its a faulty boot directory or whatever,

or my ram went caput.

or of course viruses.

what would you guys suggest i do next? change the ram? that could be expensive, I'm not exactly in love with all the stuff i have on my hard drive. maybe i should try a reinstall first?

and how do you fix the damaged boot directory thingy?
If you can get your hands on a Windows Repair disc you might be able to run the startup repair successfully, and then you'd have access to the disk repair tools, but most importantly you'd be able to see what error messages it puts out or look for some logs on the hard drive.
Or you could try a Linux liveCD of some kind. At least you'd be able to see if the hard drive is mountable so you can rescue your data.

Also I think there is an option to check your RAM in the Startup Repair options.
Post edited September 06, 2012 by Floydinizer
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)erase and start over your computer(57 posts)(57 posts)
(57 posts)