Horridly pissed

[Naked Snake]

I had to reformat my computer, and I lost everything, tons of files I dont even know where I got them and stuff. Most can be recovered, through downloading and countless hours of installing shit and rebooting.

[Liam]

Everybody laugh.

[EllipsusD]

I feel your pain, man. A few months ago my computer was corrupted and I told my brother to reinstall Windows. "Don't reformat, whatever you do. Just reinstall Windows." As soon as I get home: "Bah, I reformatted like you toldeded me to, bah." I lost a lot of important stuff because of that, but there will always be new stuff to flood your hard drive with. Good luck in your efforts.

[læmænt]

Having lost immense amount of stuff on two partitions (R.I.P), I will laugh at you now :)

[danarchist]

I wish I COULD format this computer, its so fucking cluttered, and I don't have a clue what half the files do. But I have my own computer now, so it doesn't matter. My mom can sort it out. Bah

[Naked Snake]

Well, all my games are installed except Starcraft + the add-on cause I cant find my CD-Case (and the CD-key) and DooM II, which I have to get my disc back from my cousin. Then alls I have to do, which I have been, is redownload all the programs I had like Bullet Proof FTP and I.E. 6...

[GooberMan]

reformatting's fun. always an advantage to have a 20gig drive to back your stuff up on though.

[Naked Snake]

Well, the advantage to reformatting is my computer has never worked better. Well...In a while anyway.

[GooberMan]

it usually helps to clean install windows every 4 months, which I reckon sucks. an operating system should stay stable and run at a decent speed no matter how many programs you have installed.

[Bane]

my comp was formatted a while ago, and we wanted to try new XP on it, works well. The last straw was our three copies of RTCWs, they wouldn't work on this comp, but tried them on dad's, and vôila, thy were all working, but my pc was totally screwed.

[Fredrik]

Why didn't you just put the stuff you wanted on CDs?

[dsm]

A few months ago my computer was corrupted and I told my brother to reinstall Windows. "Don't reformat, whatever you do. Just reinstall Windows." As soon as I get home: "Bah, I reformatted like you toldeded me to, bah."

Jeez, that's one dumb brother.
How old is yer bro'?
At least my younger brother is a lot more technically interested in computers than I and too clever to actually format a computer with a lot of files on the hard drive.

[Arioch]

I think it's all a matter of having an instinct of what software can and cannot be installed on a computer.

For example, I've absolutely a ton of software installed on my computer at work, and yet I've not had to reinstall for a long time, and I've certainly not had to ever reformat. The secret to my success is that I absolutely refuse to install Quicktime, RealNetworks software, web (crappy) (spyware) software such as Bonzi, etc.

If it wants to put a tendril of itself into your memory even if you don't need to be running it ("quick launch" hooks come to mind - see RealNetworks software), either configure that away or refuse to ever install it. The exception to this rule of course is Microsoft products, in which case I stay current with patches with the help of C-Net's excellent catchup utility, and WindowsUpdate of course.

Go through your "add/remove programs" panel once in a while, remove the extraneous shit that accumulates there when you don't have a sound installation policy such as mine.

Your system'll likely run for a much longer time and more stably.

[Fredrik]

I'll have to reformat my old comp some day in the near future. Unfortunately, I haven't been as clever as arioch, so there's like 73 useless programs installed and not all of them can be correctly uninstalled because I've deleted a file or something like that (I've had this very computer since the time when I didn't know the difference between a CPU and a harddrive) :P

I also for some reason never delete old documents, pics etc. I just collect them in numerous "temp" folders which I never ever get around to clean up.

I think I'll just put those on CDs to have 'em there.

CD burners rock. Yay!

[dsm]

CD burners rock. Yay!

Hm, whenever I hear/read the word "CD burner" I automatically think of pirated software.

[spank]

dsm: that depends on the people's goodwill. Despite having a fairly fast and efficient CD burner I rarely copy software I borrow, and much of it is actually legal.

[dsm]

dsm: that depends on the people's goodwill. Despite having a fairly fast and efficient CD burner I rarely copy software I borrow, and much of it is actually legal.

That's right, but too many of my acquaintances burn game or software CDs.

Anyway, back to the topic: The computer that I currently use hasn't been formatted yet, but my younger brother's comp has been formatted lots of times - he has a tendency to download a lot of rubbish (has even tried to persuade me to do the same!).

[AngelOfDeath]

My computer has been reformatted 3 times without anyone even asking me if I had anything important.
Needless to say I lost countless wads single player saved games mods mp3's etc...

Since I've been using Windows XP (Pro) I have'nt had any problems. It is a really stable OS.

[DooMBoy]

Dear Lord, how I hate reformatting the old comp. Everything's fine one day, then suddenly-poof! Re-install everything. Sorry to hear that BBG.
The worst part is re-formatting the hard-drive itself, which wastes countless hours (to me at least). Then re-installing Windows, which is a huge pain in my ass.

[deadnail]

Goddamn these Doomworld popups. I just got three of them reading the last page and two of them came out of nowhere opening up this reply page. Christ.

Well then, I find that it can actually be a bit of fun to reformat the old computer. It's not fun being chained to it for about five hours while you get everything back in order but the end result is great.

It is SO much easier when you have two harddrives, and you can back everything up on one, format the other, do a fresh and clean install of your OS, copy everything over, format the OTHER drive too, and just sort shit out and get the latest versions of your favorite software.

Everytime I do that my PC ends up just a little bit neater and more streamlined. =)

Of course, I haven't had to do that since I got XP. ^.^