Stupid Windows

One of the other things that took up all of last weekend was reinstalling the Windows installation on one of my computers.

I think that I've mentioned this before [fluggart.com], but on every computer that I have that runs Windows, I reinstall it about once a year. Windows just accumulates all kinds of cruft, and reinstalling maintains optimum performance.

To speed things up, I make a backup of a clean installation of Windows on that computer. When I want to reinstall, I just wipe the hard drive, and copy the backup back onto the clean partition. That way, the actual OS part of the reinstall takes about 5-10 minutes, instead of the hour that it takes to actually reinstall through the Windows installation media.

The thing that makes the process take forever it reinstalling all of the applications. Now, you're probably wondering why I don't just back up the Windows installation after I have installed all of the most common applications. There is a reason why. It's because there are always new versions of all of the things that I use by the next year. So, I end up reinstalling the clean install of Windows, and then going straight for the install of the newest versions of all of the applications, which reduces cruft.

Plus, the applications that I use change so rapidly from year to year. When I make the backup in the first place, there is no way for me to tell if any of this crap is really going to be useful to me a few years down the line (assuming I'm still using the computer).

I just keep thinking that there has to be a better way to go about this process. It would be great if Windows didn't need to be reinstalled every year, but I don't see that happening. It seems like everyone else gets around the problem by buying a new computer every time theirs needs to be reinstalled, but that goes against everything that I stand for...