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How many times have you had to reinstall your OS

Ecodisk said:
Just kind of curious if its true that you never have reinstall a macintosh OS. :D
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I've only been using the platform since April, but I would never believe anyone who would say that you NEVER have to reinstall Mac OS X. There are going to problems, that will, for whatever reason, require a reinstall for someone, somewhere. Anyone who says that their OS will never have to be reinstalled either hasn't had to do it, or is fibbing to you. ;)

I reinstalled the OS only once, but it was because I had just gotten a replacement iBook (for the one that had a dead pixel after a week), and had problems getting it up and running out of the box. (I may have done something that caused the problem - honestly, I can't even remember.) I was new to the OS, and didn't know how to troubleshoot it, so I did a reinstall to clear it up. It probably didn't require it, and I haven't done it since. Further, this OS doesn't seem to get all mucked up like Windows does with daily use. I don't see myself reinstalling any time in the near future. My Windows PC is up for a rebuild, however, after about a year.
 
Lets see. I've been using Macs since 2002.

The only times I reinstalled the OS was to upgrade from Jaguar to Panther. Then on the Powerbook from Panther to Tiger.

So essentially zero.:p
 
I had to reinstall when I replaced my hard drive.

Edit: Oh, and when I upgraded to Tiger. The upgrade was ridiculously buggy, so I did a full reinstall.
 
I've had my latest Mac since December of 2003 and have not needed to install OS X even once. Its' great. :cool:

And for what it's worth, we never had to install the OS on my brother's Mac SE/30 or our Apple //e... ;)
 
Just to buck the trend, I've re-installed it once aside from the upgrade (A&I) to Tiger.

I had some weird configuration problem where every time I plugged in my iSight, Finder would restart and close all the open apps. Very odd; the initial troubleshooting by the Mac Genius got us nowhere so I did an Archive and Install. I figured that 40 minutes of my time doing an A&I was better than spending an another hour trying obscure fixes.
 
I have never re-installed OS X on my own systems (3 of them, the oldest of which was purchased in 2001)

I did once re-install OS X on a friend's Mac that was having hardware problems...I needed to be absolutely sure that it was a hardware failure, and that there was no chance that bad software could be causing the problems. (It was a hardware problem, and the fresh OS made no difference.)
 
Installed for updates. Installed once for a system failure only curable by the reinstall. Installed once cause I had so much crap that I wanted to streamline. Reinstall on new macs to get rid of all the apps ill never use and take up too much space i.e. Garage band etc.

and yes, macs need an "uninstall option".
 
since 1993 I've not had to reinstall......I've done updates as they came out but never had to reinstall anything after it had been previously installed
 
Nermal said:
I had to reinstall when I replaced my hard drive.
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Exactly the same. I also do clean installs as opposed to upgrades (Panther to Tiger) but I'm lucky enough to have two computers running so I get no downtime and I lose no data. :)
 
dmetzcher said:
I've only been using the platform since April, but I would never believe anyone who would say that you NEVER have to reinstall Mac OS X. There are going to problems, that will, for whatever reason, require a reinstall for someone, somewhere. Anyone who says that their OS will never have to be reinstalled either hasn't had to do it, or is fibbing to you. ;)

....
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This is simply not true. Reinstalling the OS is SOP for Windows users. Even there, I bet dollars to donuts that half or more Windows reinstallations are required more by the ignorance of the user than by the damage to the system. On the Mac, it is an entirely different story. In the absence of damage to the hard drive or an extremely stupid action by the user, there should never be a reason to reinstall MacOS X.
 
Thanks for starting this thread.

Answer: never (I maintain three Macs currently).

My everyday desktop Mac (a Cube) started out life running OS 9.x, and has been upgraded straight through to Tiger. When I installed a new hard drive a couple of years ago, I cloned the old one to the new one, and just kept going. So it's been over five year now on this machine. I've had no OS problems that could not be fixed quite easily and without a reinstallation.

Try telling this to a Windows user. They'll think you are lying.
 
MisterMe said:
This is simply not true. Reinstalling the OS is SOP for Windows users. Even there, I bet dollars to donuts that half or more Windows reinstallations are required more by the ignorance of the user than by the damage to the system. On the Mac, it is an entirely different story. In the absence of damage to the hard drive or an extremely stupid action by the user, there should never be a reason to reinstall MacOS X.
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SOP? Most of the time that I have to reinstall windows is because so much crap ends up on it (adware and spyware) and it slows down the system. Its much easier to just reinstall windows then it is track down and delete all the garbage.
 
I believe that is what was meant by SOP (standard operating procedure).

I don't know how or even if you can fix a hosed Windows registry.
 
Of all the macs in my family I've administered since about 1992: 0

I still wouldn't go so far as to say that it will never happen. It seems everytime I upgrade, the buggier OSx tends to get.
 
MisterMe said:
This is simply not true. Reinstalling the OS is SOP for Windows users. Even there, I bet dollars to donuts that half or more Windows reinstallations are required more by the ignorance of the user than by the damage to the system. On the Mac, it is an entirely different story. In the absence of damage to the hard drive or an extremely stupid action by the user, there should never be a reason to reinstall MacOS X.
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Have had my current system for roughly a year and a half, have yet to have any problems with Windows and haven't reinstalled once.
 
wow, i've had to do a clean install to get bugs fixed on my PB about 3 times since i got it about 1.5 years ago....anyh other mac of mine has been fine, probably because its the powerbook i use most of the time anyways
 
gco212 said:
Have had my current system for roughly a year and a half, have yet to have any problems with Windows and haven't reinstalled once.
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Wow. Do you not share it with alot of people and do you not download very often? Most of the time that I see windows loaded with garbage is when so many people are shareing it and they are constantly downloading things.
 
biohazard6969 said:
wow, i've had to do a clean install to get bugs fixed on my PB about 3 times since i got it about 1.5 years ago....anyh other mac of mine has been fine, probably because its the powerbook i use most of the time anyways
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You almost certainly didn't actually need to reinstall.
 
Isn't this thread not supposed to be here?

Here is hardware section I think. :eek:

But that's true, Mac OS X is very reliable. That's also why I once said apple might need to sell hardware manufacturing out and focus on OS X like Microsoft.

OS X is based on bsd, which makes OS X the most popular unix around the world. It's very hard to damage the kernel under unix.

Not even reinstall, I restart the machine no more than 10 times since I bought it 5 months ago. Put it back to sleep, and wake it up in the morning.

I have to live with some hardware problems though. Love Tiger but hate powerbook. :(
 
I bought my iBook in August 2004 with Panther and than in May of 2005 I upgraded to Tiger and did a clean install just for the fun of it.
 
Ecodisk said:
Wow. Do you not share it with alot of people and do you not download very often? Most of the time that I see windows loaded with garbage is when so many people are shareing it and they are constantly downloading things.
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Mostly, my family uses it (4 people in total, 2 of which have no idea what they're doing on a computer) and constantly use it. I download a good amount of stuff, though nothing via p2p services.
 
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