I've had my setup since about the same time you've had yours and I had to do a system restore this past holiday. It was no fun either. Took a few days just to get things workable.

Jan 06 - reformat via partitioned recovery - no disk
put me back to pristine July 03 condition

have you any idea of how many updates came out between july03-jan06? I do.
any idea of how long it takes to reupdate on dialup? (i got 16 more to go)

Did a complete reinstall from disc , which is about 2 years old, last fall. Good thing i had DSL for all those updates

Luckily this was before I started using all of the Stardock software. I'm not looking forward to the next time I need to do one or when I get a new pc and end up needing to reinstall all of the skins I've downloaded from backup into the right directories for the Stardock apps.

Not a hard question to answer here.. I usually do a new install whenever I see as needed. I use a lot of business software so it has to be installed clean for domain usage. Plus with that in mind we frown on reinstalling domains - but in my case I do it a lot. Mainly because it works better for me that way. Like with the new sp1 for vista I had already installed like 5 times during the testing and then after the final rtm I still had to redo my install to complete my driver update installs. This was due to the way sp1 does such drivers as it installs. But I did a special install for my chipsets and hardware that was internally ready at first and then another with drivers for after sp1 for external hardware. Plus I installed clean with sp1 by not installing any past windows updates. Those are covered with sp1 updates installed with sp1.
So I figure I do an install almost every other month or so during testing. With of course the usual image backups to fall back on in times I just want to start with what I once had and such.
Re installing an OS is easy as you make it with of course understanding how your system needs are meet by what you use.
Good luck and I do recommend reinstalling for problems which can not be resolved by usual task of just cleaning or editing such for a better performance. Finding the whys and why nots is the key to having a good OS and having it the way you want it to operate.

SGT  

25 Jan, 2005.

I know that because I have a Drive Image backup that dates to then.

I do them weekly...and the latest is numbered 114 ....so near enough to 114 weeks...

Wow .... I didn't expect a response like that !! Thanks , folks !!

It's certainly interesting to see how we all 'manage our systems',so to speak ...

" Keep'em clean to keep 'em mean , eh ? ? !! "

nah formatting isn't that bad...i got webroots window washer,window washer allows you to make a bootable floppy or cd that erases eveything on the HDD including the partition basically it "zeros" the drive back to the way it was when you first bought the HDD.before i even do any pc restores i use that then i do the restore.also my restore dvd's are dated back to 2/2/2007.

Got this one Aug. 2006 not had to reinstall.

About every 6 months needed or not  

Edit-button missing:



That should have been February 07 of course

Formatting is just time consuming...and yes...a pain in the butt. Had to do that a few times before I got stopped adding crap to my system that I would end up deleting anyway and in the process screw something up. But since I bought Acronis True Image Home Edition I never have to do that again. All I do now is make updated system backups when I add anything major...otherwise I just copy new folders to my external hard drive. So much easier to hit a button and walk away!

Yeah, True Image is the way to go.

My last 're-install' was just restoring a previous image I had when something went wonky. I make a new image about every week or so.

I also image my data drive ... the one with skins, WIP, etc.