Damn computers!

[Barley]

Am I the only one that finds computers start to mess up after a few months of formatting?

Every time I format my PC it seems to work fine for 4 to 6 months then the problems start to creep in.  Random programs crashing, and the whole thing just running generally slow...

Turned on my PC this morning and it decided out of the blue that the internet wouldn't work any more, hope considerate of it!  So then I thought, right I'm not having this, out with the XP CD and a fresh install.

Then I remembered, I have an old RAID controller in a box on top of the wardrobe, so I decided I'd route it out and pop it into my PC.

you see a while back I bought a 60GB Seagate Barracuda HD to go with the one I already had, and spent a fair bit of money on a decent RAID controller.  I spent ages getting everything ready only to find out the RAID controller wouldn't work, so I gave up.

Shortly after I bought a cheapo RAId controller but never got around to using it, but thought today was as good a time as any to try it seeing as I was formatting anyway.

Got everything connected and fired the PC up, having of course copied the drivers to disk so Windows XP could find them when I was installing.

3 disks later i finally found one that worked, and you wonder why no one uses them any more  Eventually got into Windows and everything seems to be running nicely now.  I can see a bit of difference when I'm doing stuff, everything just seems more nimble.

So overall an interesting experience.  I've learnt that Microsoft are crap, and that just because something is expensive doesn't make it better

[DarkAngel]

Disk Defrag?

Start/AllPrograms/Accessories/SystemTools/DiskDefrag  

[smilodon]

I've noticed that a re-install every 6 - 12 months seems to make everything work much better in XP. And it was always touted as the super stable windows?

I religiously keep everything I download or install on a second hard drive so formatting and reinstalling takes about 45 minutes to an hour.

Trouble is the XP updates and Steam install add another 1/2 day to the process, so I'm less inclined to whip out my XP disk. I've started to actually try to fix stuff now  

[Barley]

Originally posted by smilodon@Jun 28 2004, 12:02 AM
Trouble is the XP updates and Steam install add another 1/2 day to the process, so I'm less inclined to whip out my XP disk. I've started to actually try to fix stuff now  

Yeah tell me about it.  I have a folder full of Windows updates, takes the best part of an hour to get them all installed, at least my XP disk has SP! pre-installed, phew.