Flush

WARNING! : Keep barf bag handy.

Consider this analogy : Your PC is basically a commode. (For those with white coloured cases, this is more true than for others…I don’t know anyone with a ceramic PC case, so I can’t say anything about that…) Anyway, software is like crap. Constantly coming and going. Some like Firefox are like stains which will never go away. Thing is, other software leave stains too. And all this accumulates over a period of time, to make your PC an unsightly mess (much like your keyboard should be like, after you vomit over it, unless you were sensible and kept an air-sickness bag next to your PC like I told you to)

Anyway, I had messed around with Windows 7 for long enough…was getting a bit bored of it…and I knew that unless I got a pirated copy of it by March 2010, I would have to give it up. I also realised that my hardware can’t really cope up with it that well. For example, just a few simple benchmarks, such as Firefox start-up times, video conversion times and average FPSs on a few games is enough to tell me that XP is better suited for my PC.

I also realised that my old XP partition, which is around 3.5 years old was getting kinda like the aforementioned crapper. It needed a bit of freshening up. Thankfully I had the original XP CD with me (I did buy the original thing). So I decided to format the whole thing and start over fresh.

First I did back up entire C: partition. I had recently downloaded Acronis Disk Director, which is an amazing partition management tool. I had enough unpartitioned space left over for backing up the entire partition. After that, I also backed up the Application Data and desktop files from both mine and my brother’s account. I’d probably need that to keep some of my old settings.

After that, it as a simple matter of booting using the XP CD and formatting the partition. The entire setup process took around 30 minutes. But after that, installing all the necessary drivers and programs took another two hours or so.

After that, my PC was as good as new. Boot up was really snappy, as was shutdown, and in fact, everything in between. In fact, I tried out Burnout Paradise on this new PC, and it was working much better than on either 7 or the old XP. That’s when I realised how much good an occasional format and reinstall can do.

In fact, if I may be a bit pedantic, you’ll probably make up on the time lost out during the whole process by the simple fact that everything else is now happening much faster than before. The registry is much lighter, startup and services are working in optimal condition. All this and more contributes to a better PC experience.

I really think anyone who has the opportunity should do what I did, and be sure to share your experiences.