Longest Windows XP Installation

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nocilah

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Curious to find out how long your Windows XP Installation has lasted before you needed to reinstall and why.

I think my longest has been almost a year until Windows Vista Transformation Pack for XP brought windows XP to it's knees, particularly when I uninstalled it.

Then the final blow was IE7. After installing it my windows xp never started up again :) hence i dont think i will try that again until i get Vista up and running again.
 
the longest for me was a year and a half, then I formatted it when I was feeling bored one day..
 
I bought XP Home when I got my nForce AMD box 3 years ago and now the very same drive and Windows install is running on my Intel based Dual Core system.

Only had to reauthenticate Windows over the phone when it saw the new motherboard.

I have installed and removed countless of programs on my setup and it never gave me a grief that I required to full reinstall ... well nothing that some surgery on the registry can't fix :).

I reckon that people are just too lazy or lack the knowledge to diagnose problems with Windows problems properly and just choose the easy way out by reinstalling it again.
 
my current one is 2.5 yrs old. Only prob is running out of space on the old 15GB hdd that I need to get a bigger one for media files.. and the time i deleted the install folder which took with it some icons and un-install-ability of some progs :( like defender i can never install :( but hey it freed up a gig cause old programs i uninstalled were still in there. So yah, if it weren't for my persistent scratching around in it it would have less issues.

would have been 5 yrs.. but the two previous yrs i partitioned the hdd to fit linux in and kept messing up and loosing the main partition by doing stupid things the 1 time, like deleting the wrong partiton when removing linux :'( and the other when partition magic died cause the power tripped :'(
 
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I'm still running on the initial Win95 install that came with my first Pentium 1 (1996). Its been through all the motions since, upgraded to 98, 2000 then XP (beta first, nogal) and ghosting to bigger drives. Hardware changed etc etc. Performance is still solid and event log is almost always healthy looking. It just takes some taking care of once in a while :) I have a dual boot setup, just in case it ever goes pear shaped.

So +10 years for a Windows installation, only ever needing to repair a couple of times on XP since it was installed (in 2002?)
 
A while ago someone posted links for a site where they had setup an underclocked pentium 1, running at 8mhz with 4mb of ram, with XP installed on it. Took around half an hour to load, and CPU usage was permanently 100%, unusable but possible.
 
i've had nix systems updated every day, updated to the next point release (similar to a jump from xp to vista) on a 6 month cycle for 2 years. the system was taken to new hardware also, i only moved the disks over and it worked, drivers and all was loaded on the first boot, and i continued working. this is not a sever, but a gaming rig, the new hardware included an audigy sound card, nvidia 6600, new motherboard and cpu ofcourse.
 
windows 98.. well dad had one like that on a p3 450, from 1999 - 2006 jan when the power cuts caused a surge and destroyed the hdd, so the insurance got him a new one with xp.[business machine thing]. Before that he use to use a 386 dos machine from 1992? till he's programs moved over to 98 and was forced to move to a p3. man teaching my dad how to use a mouse was them ost painful thing ever
 
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2 3/4 years with XP on my one laptop (still running). No reinstallation required.
Bought new laptop 2 months ago and running XP, no problems. Will probably get redone or dual-boot when Vista comes.
 
halicon said:
Curious to find out how long your Windows XP Installation has lasted before you needed to reinstall and why.

I think my longest has been almost a year until Windows Vista Transformation Pack for XP brought windows XP to it's knees, particularly when I uninstalled it.

Then the final blow was IE7. After installing it my windows xp never started up again :) hence i dont think i will try that again until i get Vista up and running again.
Click to expand...

I would say it depends on how you manage the OS.

Some noobs might have to have it reinstalled every 6 months....
LOL... First time i worked on Windows back in the day i deleted a SYS32 opperating file.....

Yup you guessed it ..... It went All Black !
 
My current machine has been running 18 months on XP pro without re-installation, I keep my opsys on a seperate drive to my data to make things easier. The longest I had win98 running was 2,5 years without re-installation. Usually I make major changes to my computer as the technology changes, and I am about 2 years behind once again. I expect this current machine will keep me going until Vista SP2 comes out and they have patched the holes. I do think I will run out of space before then and will get a larger data HDD (which has been upped twice already).
 
I have machines that still have there first copy of Xp on from when it was released, perfectly stable and still fast, just a matter of periodic maintenance.
 
6 months on this machine, I try out all the interesting programs I find and format every 6 months. Its easier than spending 4 hrs fiddling with the registry and I have a ghost image of the install they way I want it so in less than an hr I have a fresh OS.
 
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