How long has your primary Desktop OS install lasted?

How long has your primary Desktop OS install lasted (including any in-place upgrades)?

My Windows XP has been going strong for about 2 years 8 months so far, and I expect to keep on till Vista ships, when I'll either wipe it and install that or buy a new box and relegate this one to the "test lab".

About a year. Ironically, until Leighsword posted that activation bypass.  Didn't work, broke the install, found a better way (Was completely unaware I had a legit key!) 

About 5 months and it's ready to go again. Photoshop and Visual Studio seem to be too much for one PC to handle...

Had XP running for about 3 years, although it's starting to really bog down now. Prior to that I had to reinstall Win2K every year or so.

About 8 years.
- 1. Windows NT4 Workstation
- 2. W2KPro
- 3. WXP Pro
I'm recently changed HD (IDE-SCSI-IDE), motherboard (with different chipsets).
This was all happened without reinstall (reformat HD). I'm only upgrade my OS's or using in-place upgrade or repair.

3 years 2 months. Much better than the 3 - 6 month rebuilds I used to do before that.

3 month. Last reinstall is because my harddisk died in an attempt to recover dead RAID 10 data and then someone switched off the air-conditioner.  :O

Mysteriously(and fortunately), the 2 RAID component HDDs don't get overheated to death... but my desktop HDD is in the computer case while the 2 other HDDs are left on my desk, uncovered with anything. This could make some difference.

~18Months and that was only due to me buying a new machine.  

VmWare has a lot to do with this, all the crap get's installed into virtual machines these days rather than testing applications directly on my machine.

I usually reformat every 6 months, I think the longest I've gone is 8 months (since 1999, before then I think it was every year)

What do you mean "lasted" ?

Why would you ever want to reinstall your operating system?

I ran NT until I discarded that computer. I have now been running XP since it's initial release, and will keep doing that until I buy a new computer, or upgrade to Vista.

If I want to try something on a different flavour OS, or just different os configuration, I install that in VPC, do my stuff, and delete the vm image. For that purpose I have VPC images of vanilla OS installs of XP, Windows Server, Suse 9.2 etc.

Treat your computer like the production system it is, and test out stuff on a test system / setup. You will live longer and have a happier life. Trust me.

About 3 years for this install of XP. THat includes changing motherboards, which a lot of people would treat as an excuse to re-install (you just need to run the 'repair' procedure from the CD and then re-apply the last major service pack).

I don't know why people keep re-installing Windows. Either they're installing a lot of crap on their machines or they've got too much time on their hands [and yes, my PC boots just as fast as it ever did].

I've never had to reinstall an OS.  Never had to reformat either.  I hear people going on about having to reinstall or reformat all the time but I have no idea why - what ARE they doing to their machines? 

My desktop OS was released Feb. 2k5, and I installed it the month it was released. Been running like clockwork for 13 months.

WinXP:  About six months or so (since I bought the computer).

Win95:  Going on about 8 or 9 years, I think.

tuck wrote:

What do you mean "lasted" ?

Why would you ever want to reinstall your operating system?

After a while a large amount of junk accumulates itself on my system, usually "mini-apps" that I use once that I never uninstall, and programs that don't uninstall themselves properly.

Not forgetting the Windows registry, which... when large, can slow down a system, and there's no easy way to clean it out.

For Blackcomb, Microsoft should add a "This program created this key" field to each registry key, so once we uninstall a program we know which key its created so we can remove them manually.

tuck wrote:

I ran NT until I discarded that computer. I have now been running XP since it's initial release, and will keep doing that until I buy a new computer, or upgrade to Vista.

You're saying that a 4 year-old Windows XP installation, with SP2 slapped on top is more stable than a slip-streamed installation of XPSP2?

tuck wrote:

If I want to try something on a different flavour OS, or just different os configuration, I install that in VPC, do my stuff, and delete the vm image. For that purpose I have VPC images of vanilla OS installs of XP, Windows Server, Suse 9.2 etc.

That's not really practical for the systems I use, I await to see VPC or VMWare with 3D Hardware acceleration emulation (3dfx Glide support would be a winner).

tuck wrote:

Treat your computer like the production system it is, and test out stuff on a test system / setup. You will live longer and have a happier life. Trust me.

I use my system for more things than dev-work y'know:

• Gaming
• Surfing
• Media
• BitTorrent downloads (although I really should move that to my server)
  

mjtnet wrote:

I've never had to reinstall an OS.  Never had to reformat either.  I hear people going on about having to reinstall or reformat all the time but I have no idea why - what ARE they doing to their machines? 

A couple of things can cause this to happen.  If you just have a plain vanilla machine, no special hardware, and all you do is read email/surf the web, then sure, you won't have much issue.

If, however, you installed extra hardware (TV Card) or if you try out new/beta software, you are going to clutter up your machine with crap that will eventually make it run slow.

If you want to, you can run SiSoft Sandra and find out exactly how slow your computer actually does run compared to how fast it could run.  Be warned, like crack, this software is addicting (and the first taste is free).

Ever since the release of Windows 2000.  I attened the 2000 release party and got a copy of Windows 2000 Pro and Windows 2000 Advanced server with 5 and haven't had a problem with either since

My windows system has a lifespan of 1 year. thats the maximum  mainly i reinstall due to the fact that all the software i install to try  stays and so does a lot of files that i save thinking that i might need it and never touch it again. so reinstallation and reformating is a measure to remove those files which otherwise i wont delete thinking i might need it in the future.