Oh yeah..you can have your windows OS on your computer for years at a time. But slowly and surely, it will get to the point where it is a total suckage to start windows. I guess I'm really picky about my windows installations. Usually when there is some petty screw-up, like a few seconds of extra loading time in windows that shouldn't be there, it's time to reinstall. It's not like reinstalling windows is a bad thing. All you do is deltree the windows directory, and run setup again. No biggie. There is nothing better than a fresh installation of windows. Can I get an amen?
The longest period where I've not reloaded has been 2 months, and the reason why I even reinstalled was because my USB drivers totally fucked themselves, and I couldn't get USB-dependant devices to work properly. I didn't do anything at all; windows chose to screw itself up.
As for my current installation of XP, I am seriously pissed at it. FF7pc screws up once and I have to restart. Now it won't stop bothering me to scandisk my HD. It won't stop doing it. So now, it bugs me about scanning at startup no matter what, and I have about 15 extra seconds sitting there like a jackass at the "welcome" screen. I won't let XP take advantage me. They can't make me scan if I don't want to.
*Flashes his XP Corporate cd in the light*