[AngelfireUk83]

Has anyone had a XP install longer than 2yrs I can say my brother has with all updates and security it lasted 2yr 4 months then his HDD died and had to buy a new one.

I can write off Win 7 for now because it's only just come out but with XP having the old saying "Must re-install after 6 months because it's gets bloated" surly most of use have gone beyond that without any performance loss.

I personally have gone 1yr 7mths then my Maxtor 250GB HDD snuffed it and thus had to buy a new one myself luckly I back-up my music and what not so didnt lose anything.

For VISTA I've no idea if it's got a simular thing I understand it's gets better over time am I right I have only ever used VISTA for more than 3mths and then went back to XP as I just got used to it.

Win 7 is my end of November purchase but I am thinking of waiting more and getting my Denab 945.

[Know Nuttin]

I've done one (in-laws) with the initial XP release (2002, i believe?), and it's still going today. Has survived 3 heart transplants (CPU/motherboard upgrades from intel P3 to AMD AthlonXP to AMD Athlon64) and is still going today now with SP3.
We've visited a few at work where we the version of the image that was used was last used in 2005 (windows 2000).
I have a laptop that has the original Acer install from 2006.

[johnz]

I had a 2kpro machine at work that I maintained which is still going AFAIK. I set it up in 2004 if I remember right. My current Vista64 install was setup in Sept 2007.

[visitkans]

I was meddling around with Win 7 last week with some registry settings, experimenting with it, so i knew i will screw it up, but with the image restore option everything was a breeze,

So count me in, i have already re-installed win 7 once, if an image restore counts as a reinstall and

on my desktop, OCZ SSD blew up, so another re-image... so 2 in total

[Spyral]

My machine has definatly had longerthan 2 years intially. Its only bloaty if youd don't strip out all the crap and allow the crud to accumulate.

[Neuromancer]

XP gets reformated every few months LOL

I try out new software too much to have it last that long.

Neither with 7 (obviously)

Vista however is on my main rig, and the only reason I see for formatting right now, is upgrading the HDDs to raid or SSD.

[petteyg359]

I re-installed XP every few months prior to SP2. SP2 seemed to fix most of the bloating problems. I've been running Vista Ultimate 64-bit on my laptop and desktop since the end of the Windows Experience thing (3 months of "usage monitoring" in XP).

[hokiealumnus]

For the main XP install, I have had a copy going for just over two years. It's a little bloated but still gets the job done. The main slowness comes at startup (even with programs disabled); running after that is just as good as it ever was. Prior to that I never had a copy go over one year and reformatted regularly.

Now, with my benching copy of XP I can't even remember how many times it has been formatted/reinstalled...four or five times in the past year at least, maybe more.

The two year old copy of XP is about to get formatted though. Made the transfer completely to Win7 with RTM and haven't booted into that OS for quite a while. Finally have my wife on board, so it's time to make sure everything is backed up and format it.

Will probably install a benching copy of Vista too, so we'll have a tri-boot, but the only one in use all the time will be Win7. Here's hoping it doesn't rot and require a reinstall. It sure is doing well so far!

[DaveHCYJ]

For all OS's prior to XP my installs lasted until either the hard drive gave out or it was time to upgrade to the next OS.

With XP I only had one hard drive die, the rest of the 5 years I was on that OS I would reinstall about once a year just to get things cleared out.

I did a single install of Vistax32 when it came out which lasted a year and a half until I upgrade from 2GB to 4GB of RAM and then I reinstalled with Vistax64 which lasted until Win 7 beta and finally Win7.

[Bobnova]

GF's laptop XP install is still going after five years, which is a record for any windows install i've seen personally.
Mine tend to make it about two years before i get annoyed and nuke it. Or i change hardware and that nukes it. The shop XP install has been going for quite a while now that i think about it, quite possibly close to five years, maybe a bit more. Been through five motherboards and three GPUs (one of which cooked itself) too. Still runs great.
My current XP install will probably last a long time, mainly because i use ubuntu64 as my daily driver.

[doublejack]

My parents computer probably holds some sort of record in this area. It started with DOS 5.0 on a 40mb Maxtor hard drive. I added Windows 3.1 on top of DOS in 1992 (you had to have DOS back then even if you had Windows). It went through some MS DOS upgrades, eventually up to 6.22. I then upgraded it to Win95 when that was released. Then it went to Win98. Then to WinME. Then to XP. All of these were in-place upgrades, overlaying the old OS with the new one.

Now they are using 32-bit Vista Home Basic. Of course there have been many, many hardware changes over the 18 years they've owned a computer, but the last time I did a hard drive format for them was back in the days of Dos 6.2 (they contracted a virus that I could not disinfect, so I had to fdisk). When they need a bigger hard drive, I just clone the old drive to a new & bigger one and they're off and running again. When they need a faster computer, I will do a mobo/cpu/ram/gpu upgrade and get the OS running with the new hardware. I find it much easier this way because all of their familiar programs are there and I don't have to teach them that much.

They ran XP from 2002 until early 2008 when I got them on Vista. I upgraded them to Vista because my sister had a bad habit of infecting their computer with malware when she came home to visit, and I almost had to do a fresh OS install. I set her up with very limited user rights.

The oldest program my parents still use is called VGA Planets. My dad started playing that game back in 1993 or 1994, and is currently in two games (it's a play by email game, but back in the old days we'd use a BBS to exchange turns).

Originally Posted by hokiealumnus

For the main XP install, I have had a copy going for just over two years. It's a little bloated but still gets the job done. The main slowness comes at startup (even with programs disabled); running after that is just as good as it ever was. Prior to that I never had a copy go over one year and reformatted regularly.

Now, with my benching copy of XP I can't even remember how many times it has been formatted/reinstalled...four or five times in the past year at least, maybe more.

The two year old copy of XP is about to get formatted though. Made the transfer completely to Win7 with RTM and haven't booted into that OS for quite a while. Finally have my wife on board, so it's time to make sure everything is backed up and format it.

Will probably install a benching copy of Vista too, so we'll have a tri-boot, but the only one in use all the time will be Win7. Here's hoping it doesn't rot and require a reinstall. It sure is doing well so far!

+1. Most of the slowdown does in fact come at startup time. An older XP install takes way, way longer to startup than a fresh install even if both have identical software installed. Maybe this is attributable to registry issues? I'm not really sure.

However, there is also a small performance hit. It won't be noticeable except if you benchmark, but a fresh & clean install is a bit faster than an old install.

[oakstave]

I had an XP install that lasted since 2002. I installed Mint 6 over it earlier this year. As long as I did regular maintenance, I never noticed any slowdown, or serious issues.

With Vista, I've had to reinstall 3 times in 2 years for catastrophic failures. One related to video drivers, one from trying to cut and paste 2 gig file, and I forget the first one.

Don't know about about W7, 'cause I'm not buying it.

[TheGreySpectre]

My laptop has gone for about 1.5 years now...then again I only turn it on about once a week. Desktop has Windows 7...so since whenever RTM came out.

[benbaked]

I have an IBM tower that has been running the same install of Win2K since 2002, and several Shuttle XPC sffs that have been running the same installs of XP since they were assembled in 2004.

[stool]

I just ended a 4 year XP install with Windows 7. I still have XP installed on 4 rigs while I evaluate 7.

[Theocnoob]

I reformat every six to eight months.
We all know windows slowly destroys itself.
The opening audio should be "Needle and the damage done" instead of the windows jingle.

[Rich'[ard]]

lol. i used to format every 6 months due to viruses and waht not...but now Vista has given me nothing but ultra smoothness
i think i've had this install for nearly a year now...but it's going to end with a new w7 install

[Sydney]

6 months maybe. I installed windows about 5 times just in October, seeing as I only use it for gaming there isn't really any data worth backing up, save for savegames, therefore I just reformat as I please.

[Flurp]

I've got a pc that's been running xp since `03 at my parents house. used constantly until mid `06... now it's used for their majicjack phone thing... but has an uptime of a bout a year and half...

[Ben333]

So doublejack, do they have the same case they had prior to 1992? I'm thinking ATX wasn't around back then. I'd be interested in an outline of the upgrades. Were they upgrades or would you say the whole system was basicly replaced a couple times? I think that's neat though if they have 18 year old files on their computer running vista.

I run XP installs as long as I can, I think I've got a few months on every one I have going now. Had one going on five years on my old thinkpad but I screwed that up and it won't boot now Still have a copy of 2000 Pro on there that works fine though.