Reset Required?

[Robin Long]

I’ve had my current system which is:

Intel G3220 3GHz

Asus H81M-Plus

8 GB DDR3 1600MHz

Nvidia GeForce GTX750

For 2 and a bit years now running first Win 8 then Win 10 via the upgrade in that time it’s never caused any problems but lots of things have come and gone software wise? the system works well and Ido believe in the old adage “if it ain’t broke!”.  But I’m wondering if a reset should be carried out on it to clean it out so to speak.  Is it worth taking the system down and reinstalling it all?

Cheers Knight,

RIP Spike09 Your Missed
If I'm not here, I'm there.

Finally joined Twitter! longr79

[The Duke]

A reinstall wouldn’t take long as you’d just install ten , and there isn’t that many updates. But if it ain’t broke.

I do like a periodic reinstall though, but I always do a clone as soon as it’s all up-to-date and my software is  Installed and also up-to-date.

That way I’m 6 months tome I just load the clone, and only need to update the 6montjs and make a fresh clone, always keeping 2 pervious clones . Just in case. It makes doing an install take 30 mins instead of a whole night or longer.

Though I broke my cycle when I went to 10 and haven’t made any clones as my old version of clonzilla no longer worked.

The next time o do an install I will be cloning it, and getting back to my old roitine . Also I keep all data saperate mostly in the cloud or sensitive stuff on a 2 x USB HDD for archive, and isn’t thumb drives for what I’m currently working on, so I don’t need to do backups , I can just wipe my machines and bi up and running quickly.

But with 10 I’ve not noticed any slowdown .

 

[Dave Rice]

I have found that a reset is worth doing if you’ve come from 8 to 10. Note that is a reset not a reinstall. You do not need to boot from a USB etc.

However with my T420 Lenovo decided not to support W10 Anniversary, so things like the fingerprint reader stopped working that had gone through updates just fine.

That sorted itself when I ran a chipset update from Intel. W10 found all the “missing” hardware and Windows Hello does the login with your fingerprint job.

The only things not working are the F key alternatives like F4 for sleep. Brightness and volume up and down are OK though so it’s no biggie.

In your case Asus have W10 support for your motherboard, so if you want things like AI Suite back you can.

Don’t bother getting chipset drivers from Asus, they are way out of date. Just go to Intel and get their automatic updater.

Windows will sort out the Asus specific ATK driver within a rebooot or two, so don’t panic if you see some unknown hardware in Device Manager.

[Jukebox]

Whilst agreeing with some of the points made by other members, I still think that if you’re happy with the present behaviour of the PC you should think twice about a fresh install. Certainly if you’re doing a complete reinstall from scratch the OS won’t (or shouldn’t!) take long, but getting your applications reinstalled and all the settings and preferences back to your liking can be a real pain. If you take that route make sure you have backed up everything you may need – some items such as Microsoft Templates and Thunderbird settings are hidden away in AppData/Roaming and can easily get forgotten and if you use Picasa to view your photos make sure you have saved the hidden picasa.ini file in each folder as this holds any changes you have made to the view of your pics. Personally I’d just do a Disk Cleanup (in your C: drive properties) and give Ccleaner a whirl.

[Tippon]

Along the same backing up lines as Jukebox’s post, I use portable apps for a lot of things now. e.g. I use Thunderbird Portable as I have to check several email accounts, and I can back it up to a pen drive and take it with me whenever I leave the house. Anything happens at home and I’ve still got most of my emails. The last few days are usually still stored online in the trash if I forget to keep up to date too 🙂

[Author]

Posts