Working with all three platforms ... 3420

To defend Leythos, his experience is the same as mine with all the computer users I support. I'm that 'friend of a friend who works with computers', so I get calls at least 2-3 times a week with computer-related problems. I also reinstall Windows about 2-3 times a month for any given friend to fix whatever problems since it's often quicker to reinstall then mess with trying to find why IE won't load or why MS Word gives a crazy error on startup, and so forth. And those registry fixers, though they've worked before, are maybe 10% success rate for me.

In my experience there are many factors that can cause a computer to quit running as it should, including running it on the open Internet with no firewall, installing everything under the sun, downloading warez, visiting malware sites, clicking on spam emails, viruses, virus and spyware scanners (sometimes more harmful then the viruses and spyware themselves), and many other factors. IMO when the problem is software and the user doesn't have much data to backup (no more then a few CD's worth), reinstalling is always a great option to refresh the system. These issues aren't all isolated to Windows, but I've yet to do a reinstall on any OS other then Windows other then an OS upgrade (like OSX Panther to Tiger or Slackware 9 to 10). I always do clean installs instead of version upgrades, but that's another topic :)

Granted, for someone who knows what to avoid and how to keep their box running smooth, that's great -- but that's the exception to the average computer user. I know folks who run Windows (firewalled) with no virus-spyware scanners, run Firefox, don't download crap, and watch where they surf -- and their boxes run great -- but that's the exception.

My goal isn't to turn this thread into a 'my OS is better then your OS' by any means, but my experience is that Windows systems used by the average non-computer savvy user do benefit from being reinstalled a few times a year. That's the nature of the beast.

Sam Alex