2000 here. Install 2 years old. Many , Many programs, still running fine. When there's some minor glitch, I fix it, I don't run screaming to my mommy , and begging her to reformat. This is the act of an AOL user. No one that knows anything about computers does that. Period. Example: the other day , an uninstall deleted all my run keys from the registry. Since I back my system up before doing anything like that, I booted to the backup, copied the run key to floppy. Booted back to the main system and merged it in. No reformat, no reinstall of the affected programs. Reinstalling the system every x months or reformatting is turkeyfied.
Oh bull! You want to tell me about computers? LMAO! My brother runs one of the biggest computer businesses in this country, and re-installs win every 3-6 months. Myself, where do you think my nickname/handle comes from? Chances are I was doing matrices in assembler, playing with acoustic couplers and hanging on BBS's on ARPAnet structures when you didn't even see the word "internet" coming. I've programmed in about half a dozen languages and run over a dozen OS, so I can say I have a certain reference base. I've literally grown up with this $hit and been with it for ~3/4 of my life. And I tell you with full confidence : "Windows is crap, and it slows your computer down, to a point where you have to re-install it". If this doesn't apply to you, then maybe you're god, or maybe you're just using your machine to play minesweeper. Well good for you. Perhaps you should work for M$. Doesn't mean you can call me an AOL user! Give me a break!!!
well, if tearing down my house took 25 mins.... yes that's all it takes to reinstall, welcome to Pentium 4 with all the money I manage through my PC ...better safe than sorry, just a matter of personal perception of risk
lol. Typical hysteria from non-power users. Been in the computer game since Apple II, Atari 400 days. So don't impress me with your supposed longevity. I actually install lots of stuff on my computer, not 1 or 2 apps , so the notion of reinstalling every x months is absurd. W2000, and as far as I can tell Xp, does not require such primitive habits. I don't remember having to FORMAT C: for ANY REASON , virus or otherwise in over 20 years, (maybe once but I can't remember that far back) and countless installs of software, and hours of use. Might be the exception, but I doubt it. You see, those that can, don't complain. So if the box slows up 5% over time so freakin what? Chips are so fast today it doesnt matter. Now, if you're saying you are not competent in maintaining the system in a healthy state, than I sympathize. For that affliction, you can pay someone who knows, or ,as you see fit, FORMAT C: PS I put every dang thing on the box, Unreal II, music software, anything that crosses my path, without fear or regard for "contaminating" the machine, a notion particularly held by the uninitiated. If something gets nasty (rare), I pluck it out, like the Bible says.
Nah, I've reconsidered, and will be reformatting every 4 weeks , just in case something gets in the registry that wasn't there when installing. Thanks for the heads up!
Get a "system restore" program like Go Back from Roxio (now sold to Symantec, I think). Great utility and timesaver.
I started this thread, and it seems whenever I do something ill-advised I end up going deeper into the machine, and I guess that is the way most learning takes place about cpu's... it's definitely is true for me. I came across the three processes named WERULE, which certainly sounded like spybots, viruses, or whatever, and I definitely wanted to get rid of them. I started by using HijackThis, which identifies all processes and gives you the option of deleting them. I got rid of close to twenty processes that didn't belong on my machine, and didn't delete anything that belonged, thanks to HijackThis' Tutorial, plus using Google when I had any doubts about a process. Still, I could not find the WERULE processes(I first discovered them running PitStop.com's antiviral). Then I used the "show log" box on AdAware, and this shows processes in even greater detail, including the time they were created, last fooled with, etc. The AdAware log identified the WERULE processes by name, and through their codes I was able to identify them easily by viewing the process log in Task Manager. I deleted them by clicking on "end process tree." I haven't seen them since. I don't know much about computers(relative to many of you), but I hope this info helps. Alan
alanack, my compliments. You have crawled out of the muck of AOLism and into the world of the CoMpUtEr WhIzArd. Doesn't it feel better to be empowered than to chuck it all and start from square one? Just a heads up, deleting(killing) the process will only cure the problem until the next boot. If you removed the offending registry keys that would do the trick. I very rarely fall victim to any virus attack. Just lucky ;-), but I did catch one of these browser hijakker scummy things the other day. Had to scramble to get up to snuff on how to get rid of it, but did so without any issues. I asked 100 AOL users what to do, and 99 told me FORMAT C:, and the other one said buy a new 'puter.