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Comment by Jaruzel | Hacker News Reader

I was puzzled by the article authors statement on this. My main daily machine is Windows 10. It's been running the same 'copy' of Windows 10 since late 2016, and has gone through all the major updates since then, and has had many applications installed and removed on it since then. Office has gone from v2010 thru v2013 to Office 365 (effectively v2019), and I'm always playing with new software. The machine still runs perfectly fine, with no strange problems, errors or slowdowns.

To rebuild it to the state it currently is, would take me several days of installing and configuring, for very little benefit. Imho, there is no reason to reinstall your OS every few months.

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For me, Windows XP was the last version of Windows I found the need to reinstall regularly. I skipped Vista, and from 7 onwards, I never felt the need to do a reinstall.

I set up my current desktop with Windows 8.1 more than 5 years ago, upgraded to Windows 10, and still use the exact same installation to this day. It even survived a migration to a new SSD when I upgraded the PC a few years back.

The “needs regular reinstalls” meme had merit 10+ years ago. These days, not as much.

I used to update my memes and references every few months, but since Windows 10 came out I haven't needed to reinstall my memebase as often so I am still running some old memes.

Fun fact: Nowadays Windows reinstalls itself for every major feature update. But settings are copied over so you don't have to reinstall all your applications.

And since I think v1803 or earlier you can basically do an OSX like in place reinstall keeping your files and apps or just files not to mention the actual Reset feature built into recovery that can do this without an install disk/usb. Quick, simple, and works very well unless the OS is shredded by bad GPOs or other changes most users won't be able to do themselves.

I don't think the author was up to speed on caring for their Windows install or simply messed with it enough to break it over time and should have been prepared for the issues that brings. I've stuck to a pretty clean W10 install since mid 2015 so when I reinstall I'm up and running after Ninite and a few other installs I keep on a file share like specific drivers or apps I don't want to download again. W10 is fairly robust unless you do things to break it like click through UAC prompts, edit Windows dir files without backups, or install unvetted software from the internet (spoiler: same wisdom applies to OSX and Linux)

I can't speak for the experience of Windows 10 because I stopped using Windows altogther some time around 7. But I entirely sympathise with OP's habit. Maybe not as fequently, but at least once or twice per year, I reformatted my disk and reinstalled Windows just because if I didn't the whole system became sluggish and unusable. Looking back on it I think it was also a way of exerting control over a system I knew wasn't truly ever mine.

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