On Friday I decided to do spring cleaning on my desktop and reinstall Windows along with everything else. I hadn’t intended to. Originally, I was just going to do a backup onto a new 2 TB drive that I’d bought, but then I started thinking about just moving my current 1 TB to a secondary slot and installing everything from scratch. I’d been having some weird errors sporadically during shutdown, and besides, and it had been two years since I installed the OS.
I always forget how much time it takes to do a fresh install. I’m not talking about Windows either. Windows 7 is actually pretty quick to install and is mostly an automatic process. No, what’s taken the most time has been putting all of my games back on. Since this was supposed to be a clean start, it didn’t make much sense to just copy over my old installs for my games. Instead I downloaded them all. Interestingly, the install processes for Star Trek Online, Champions Online, and Lord of the Rings Online have all changed somewhat. First they all had a Pando pre-download that’s much more obvious than the way it used to be handled. I like that it’s more upfront. Second, both Cryptic games installed to my C:\users\public folder.
Besides those three MMOs, I reinstalled Star Wars: The Old Republic and Rift. I’m a bit surprised that I put Rift back on my machine. My primary rule for doing these computer cleanings is that I don’t install anything back on the drive unless I’m going to play/use it. For instance, while I did reinstall Steam, I didn’t download all of my games again. I just reinstalled Skyrim and Orcs Must Die. I didn’t even remember that I’d bought the full version of OMD, which is another reason not to reinstall my full Steam library.
So I started thinking about it and realized that I haven’t actually given up on Rift as completely as I thought I had in my January writeup. Although, I believe it’s more about what Trion’s doing than the game itself.
So that was my weekend, and a good part of Monday. I’m still not done really, but I’ve done as much as a I need to for may day-to-day. Most of my pictures and videos and such are stuck in a Prior Install folder that I’ll pull stuff out of as I need it. Sometime in November, I’ll take a look at what’s left in there and probably delete it all.
One last thing, I really love my Coolermaster Sniper case. It’s completely tool-free, which means I was able to open it, remove one old hard drive, move my original down a slot, and insert the new drive without messing with a single screw. So nice.
That case sounds awesome. I need a lot of work with screwdrivers to to get stuff in and out of mine.
I really like the case. The only thing I needed screws for was to mount the motherboard, everything else just needs hands. Thumbscrews for the outside panels and plastic latches inside (both for the expansion cards and the hard drives. Even the mounting frames for the hard drives don’t require any screws. It doesn’t hurt that the fans all have blue LEDs on them either. 🙂
I hope you’re actually talking about TB drives, otherwise you must under some serious constraints. 🙂
Speaking of Rift, I want to get back to that some day. It have been so long since I poked my head into that game. So many games, so little time.
Whoops! Yeah, I meant TB. I’ve fixed the article.
I hear you on the too many games thing, I’m nearly drowning in unplayed games. My backlog is so large now that I have Steam games I don’t even remember buying, like Orcs Must Die.
I usually reinstall windows at least once a year. You’re right, the OS install is quick, it’s the tweaking and reinstall of software that seems to take way too long. The Sniper case is very cool. I just recently bought the HAF 922m, before that I had the HAF 912, I really like Coolermaster cases.
Checked the 922 out and inside it looks very similar to my Sniper case. The body looks quite a bit different though, plus the red REDs. I’m planning to keep my current case for a long time, but if I was buying one now, I think I’d go for the Cosmos II.
Once a year seems like a lot to me, do you do a base image? Or you just wipe the drive and re-install everything like I just got done with?
I just wipe and reinstall. Honestly over the past few years I’ve only reinstalled when I upgraded hardware cause it’s just as fun to install an OS like it once was.
Pingback:Speed matters. | Blue Kae