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Obsessive About Restoring OS

andreab35

andreab35

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 29, 2008
825
0
USA
Hey all!

I think I have an awkward problem...

Since as young as I can remember (probably at age 8) I have always been obsessive of keeping a computer clean (OS wise). It's the stupidest obsession ever.

When I was younger, I used to restore the OS on my old Windows computer at least 10 times a year, once restoring it 3 times in one month. I remember with my previous laptop, I restored Vista 5 times because I didn't feel like it was "perfect." (Hey, I don't think Vista will be ever perfect!)

It's not that I have a ton of time on my hands, but in the evening, I'll set a computer up and have it restore itself, while I do other things, like go exercise outside, go eat dinner, do some work, house work, etc. Then when it's time to settle down in bed, I enjoy putting my Mac back together again.

Right now, I have the biggest urge to restore Leopard. It's so horrible. I have never done a restore on my MacBook Air yet (got it in December) and I'm so tempted to do it. I'll probably do it once I come home. After I have a "clean" installation and put some files and software back on, I feel so much better.

Do any of you do what I do?

It's almost embarrassing... :eek:
 
I used to... I went through a phase of that with my Eee, although that was more part and parcel of poking around and learning Linux. I didn't do it much with my Macs ever, though. Actually, I guess I didn't do it that much, but the temptation was there....
 
I hate it. It's always nice after a format and everythings all tidy and fresh but the process of putting all my old files and apps back on takes me well over a day.

Install OSX. Get updates.
Install XP. Get updates.
Install Steam, copy all my games over USB2 connection (80gb worth, takes a while)
Install OSX apps . Copy over Library folders. iTunes (300gb), iPhoto (30gb).
Install XP apps and get their updates.

Grah! I tend to keep my system clean though so I only have to do this every 18 or so months.
 
That's because you grew up with windows.

My Vista machine 6 month old, already nuked it once due to virus, and is suffering some random crashing of steam so might have to do it again soon. But that's windows.

There is no registry in OSX. You can install 1000 apps in OSX but they won't slow down the system if they are not launched. You don't need to restore OSX. Most users keep their OSX install until upgrade to new OS.
 
I used to

I was never that obsessed (like you) but when I was a Windows user I would do a fresh install once a year. Based on my user habbits it seemed to need it one time a year. Since moving over to Mac of course that has not been the case. It's been so nice NOT having to do this task anymore.
 
Never had the urge to constantly reinstall ... but I used to reinstall Windows every now and again. About once a year or so.
 
andreab35 said:
Hey all!

I think I have an awkward problem...

Since as young as I can remember (probably at age 8) I have always been obsessive of keeping a computer clean (OS wise). It's the stupidest obsession ever.

When I was younger, I used to restore the OS on my old Windows computer at least 10 times a year, once restoring it 3 times in one month. I remember with my previous laptop, I restored Vista 5 times because I didn't feel like it was "perfect." (Hey, I don't think Vista will be ever perfect!)

It's not that I have a ton of time on my hands, but in the evening, I'll set a computer up and have it restore itself, while I do other things, like go exercise outside, go eat dinner, do some work, house work, etc. Then when it's time to settle down in bed, I enjoy putting my Mac back together again.

Right now, I have the biggest urge to restore Leopard. It's so horrible. I have never done a restore on my MacBook Air yet (got it in December) and I'm so tempted to do it. I'll probably do it once I come home. After I have a "clean" installation and put some files and software back on, I feel so much better.

Do any of you do what I do?

It's almost embarrassing... :eek:
Click to expand...

I do it once a year on my computers. I know I don't have to, but it forces me to do back-ups and get rid of things I don't need.
 
Consultant said:
That's because you grew up with windows.
Click to expand...

I think there's a lesson actually that Windows teaches here, which is that one must be very careful with installing new applications. It's not like my iPhone where I say, "Oooh, shiny!" and go and install some random, silly app that I keep for fifteen minutes.

Having learned that lesson, my Windows XP / SP3 computer is pretty stable. It's about six months old, and aside from clean installing the OS in the beginning (which was done to undo a partition setup, not for any other reason, really), nothing is really deteriorating on it. On the other hand, there's not that much installed on it either -- Office, iTunes, Firefox, Thunderbird, some XP themes, some codecs and video players... not much else. The lesson works, and I'm not seeing anything so far that would suggest my Eee Box will need to be restored.

Oddly something of late is making Linux on my EeePC on the other hand slow down... Firefox on it is definitely not like it was. I have to figure out what to do with that thing... maybe try Jaunty Jackalope.

Admittedly that lesson is nowhere near so important in OS X.
 
I pretty much never do unless the OS is so messed up that it won't boot :eek:
 
I'm not obsessive about it, but it does feel good to do a clean install and clean up all the cruft lying around all over my computer's hard drive. I have a unibody Macbook purchased last November. I have exams going on now, but once they are over, I'll reinstall Mac OS X from scratch and and format my Vista partition in bootcamp and install Windows 7 on it. I'll be doing both for the first time since I bought my Macbook.

The reason I need to reinstall Mac OS X is that I screwed up something to do with X11 and MacPorts, and now nedit (my favourite editor) doesn't work, and a lot of X11 applications look "wierd" when I open them.
 
I have to say that I can relate to your need to restore, although I only allow it to happen 2 times a year or so. Once you boot up the first time its like "ahhh"
 
ShaunPriest said:
I used to be obsessed by defragmenting my Windows computer. I defragged my 6GB hard-drive every single day!
Click to expand...

Haha, I used to defrag my Windows box constantly as well. When I was younger, I used to stare at the screen as it "showed" how the computer was defragging. Thank goodness for Mac's S.M.A.R.T.

Zombie Acorn said:
I have to say that I can relate to your need to restore, although I only allow it to happen 2 times a year or so. Once you boot up the first time its like "ahhh"
Click to expand...

Definitely! I HAD to reinstall OS X because the urge was so bad. Took an hour for the whole thing to install. When it booted the first time, I was like, "Ahhhh. This feels nice and fresh."

Now I'm just running updates, adding some of my files back on, adding Microsoft Office or iWork (haven't decided), installing iLife, setting up my mail accounts, etc, and then, I'm off to a nice fresh start with my Mac, again. :D
 
I used to restore my first Windows desktop several times a month as well. It was not because I felt the need, it was because I would accidentally delete something. One time I deleted command.com in Windows 3.1 which as many may know, allowed all the commands that Windows was capable of. Upon rebootung the computer after deleting that file, Windows was useless. Since that first computer, I have gone years without restoring my Windows computers. It's also been a year since purchasing my iMac and I have not restored it once. I have also never restored my Mac Pro and it will be a year in June since I bought it.
 
I was kind of like that when I was younger. I am still OCD but not too the same extent as I used to be. I used to insure that my computer was always as close to factory settings as possible, insured that my desktop was clean, but I realize now that this was mostly because I had alot of free time.

I look around my room right now and it's a huge mess. 5 years ago I would be dusting any dust particles off anything in my room. :D
 
You are not alone. A guy I knew in the Army would take his bicycle apart every Saturday morning. By apart I mean every ball bearing... every wheel spoke every single nut bold part... apart. He would then clean it all in gasoline, regrease the parts that needed it and put it all back together.
 
My obsession is always ensuring that my trash can is empty. At all times. Even if it is a word document that I just binned, I MUST SECURE EMPTY the bin. Seeing that little wad of "trash" animation sitting happily in the bin just gets me on the edge. I figure that I secure empty the bin around 10 - 15 times a day, easily.
 
Don't they have a pill for this issue.

I know the Shadetree Mechanic way of solving this is to put 5 copies of Mac OS X for Dummies in a pillowcase and whack people upside the head to impart the knowledge in the books every time you get the urge to reinstall OS X.

But I cannot think of anything else to help rid one of this obsession.
 
I used to nuke my windows box's alot when i was using them, the days back when i was using windows 95 that got nuked almost fornightly cause i stuffed something ( just messing around with files ) . The WinME came along well i can pretty much say here that was nuked weekly, and well xp i did that every 3 months

I started to get sick of restoring everything after a reload, having to do drivers, updates install your software and steam well there is a lot of gb's there to download if you haven't done any backups.

So now my Windows Rigs, get restored from a ghost image with all my programs, games, settings. My Macbook pro has only been nuked twice since i have had it and thats been about 7 months.
 
Well... the whole restore process is finally almost finished.

Currently I'm just downloading Safari 4 Beta.

The only thing I have left to do is to put all my files back, update Office 2008, and set up my mailboxes in Mail correctly.

It feels so good to have a fresh OS. :)
 
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