# Great Computer Purge (Poll) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 23, 2002, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508 "2002-12-23T08:36:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/21 "2002-12-23T23:17:25Z")
I don’t do it just for fun, as you guys seem to imply. I do if it’s necessary to get the registry to work properly or when putting in a new HD. XP Home is very fast for me & works great. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/22 "2002-12-24T00:47:38Z")
Well, I have an IBM Thinkpad that is over two years old. It has Win 98, and has always run crappy because I got it from my school and they put software on it that it should not run (like Maple 6 and Solidworks 2000.) I would pruge that, but if I uninstall anything the school put on, I might not get it back. ANd I need a lot of those programs. So, unfortunatly, it really won;t get flushed out until I graduate. My new PC, however, I just built this past summer with win XP. I am very careful abotu what goes on it, so I might never need to purge, I run Ad-Aware and Norton, both of which (to my happines) never turn up anything. ---
**Author:** ![Toddly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/22d042/32.png) [@Toddly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toddly)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/23 "2002-12-24T01:51:50Z")
I usually reformat and re-install about every 18 months or so. You can usually tell because the OS takes longer to start up. I use RegClean, Ad Aware all the time to remove unneeded stuff and clear out the Temp files. Everything important is on CD-RW so that if the disk fails we won’t loose it. This next time though I also am going to Ghost the installation as that makes re-installing super easy and quick. ---
**Author:** ![Stccrd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Stccrd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stccrd)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/24 "2002-12-24T02:18:58Z")
I have an interesting phenomenon. I have a PI 70 mhz running on windows xp. I also have an AMD XP 1700 running xp. When I forget to purge the amd machine, its a toss up as to which is faster… ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Zero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c4cdca/32.png) [@Saint\_Zero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Zero)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/25 "2002-12-24T05:48:32Z")
I’ve never deleted and reinstalled my OS on my machine. I’ve had to reinstall over it’s remains a few times when some silly program goes ballistic all across my HD, mind you. I use Win98SE ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/26 "2002-12-24T17:17:19Z")
When the BSOD becomes a more familiar sight than one’s own naughty bits, it’s time for _tabula rasa_. ---
**Author:** ![BioHazard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3bc359/32.png) [@BioHazard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BioHazard)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/27 "2002-12-24T19:58:07Z")
I never have done it unless it was absolutly neccesary, however I do upgrade my MB/Proccesser every 6 months or so. I copy the old HDD to a new, larger HDD and reformat/reinstal the old HDD as my OS Drive. My former roomate used to reformat and reinstall every 3 days or so, but he used some type of utility to automatically reinstall all drivers and SW. He was VERY OCD by the way. ---
**Author:** ![whitetho](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whitetho/32/1059_2.png) [@whitetho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whitetho)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/28 "2002-12-25T19:31:53Z")
I have a 6 year old 133 mhz PC running Windows 95, which I have never reinstalled, although I do run defrag every few months or so. I also very rarely add new programs. ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/29 "2002-12-25T21:20:53Z")
I occasionally had to reinstall OS 9 on my old iMac. One time AOL just screwed it up so badly, I felt it was the only thing to do. (I am not as savvy with OS 9 as I should, maybe a more able Mac person could have fixed it without a clean install.) Now I am using OS X on my G4 PowerMac, and so far, it’s smooth sailing. I don’t know if I’ll reinstall or purge or whatever, I guess I’ll have to check my OS X books. (OS X is Unix-based.) On my Win98 machine, I personally have NEVER purged and reinstalled. NEVER. But others did it for me. I don’t claim to be the most computer savvy person out there. I used to love installing new oddball programs. I thought, “That’s the fun of having a PC—you get to install weird freebie shit on it, just to see what it does!” But that was a bad idea. One time the PC just failed to boot properly. After behaving relatively OK it suddenly decided that it would not longer work. I tried to reinstall Windows but it wouldn’t let me do it. I took it into the shop. They said that the registry was screwed up (and also some RAM had gone bad) and so they fixed all of that up for me. I hasten to add, I did run defrag and scandisk regularly on this PC. About a year later my Win98 Machine got everything purged and reinstsalled the second time, when a friend upgraded it. I knew that it had probably gotten messed up again by then so I asked my friend to do a reinstall of Windows. He said that Win98 was in _abysmal_ condition. I told him, “I figured as much.” He reinstalled everything, and it ran OK for a while, but now I am afraid to install _anything_. My PC guru friend said (like many of the rest of you have said) to to be very careful about installing new programs. But where do you draw the line? I can live without every little crackpot freeware game that I see on [download.com](http://download.com), but some programs are essential to me, and are the reason I own a computer to begin with. And when I install them, the PC runs funkier and funkier. What is the point of this? ---
**Author:** ![Aceospades](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/848f3c/32.png) [@Aceospades](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aceospades)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508/30 "2002-12-25T22:00:42Z")
is there somewhere a step by step guide to purge my computer. i have a pent. 3 dell that runs winME [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-computer-purge-poll/144508.md?page=1)