On Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:27:07 AM UTC-4, Diesel wrote:
trader_4
Mon, 10
Apr 2017 15:43:09 GMT in alt.home.repair, wrote:

On Monday, April 10, 2017 at 5:59:54 AM UTC-4, Diesel wrote:
trader_4
Sun,
09 Apr 2017 15:56:27 GMT in alt.home.repair, wrote:

On Saturday, April 8, 2017 at 9:17:51 PM UTC-4, Vic Smith
wrote:
On Sat, 8 Apr 2017 23:56:30 -0000 (UTC), Diesel
wrote:


You code in asm? What passes for malware these days is some
pretty sorry ass **** code. I haven't seen an actual virus
infection in years.

Used to. Yes, there's be a lack of viruses of late. Haven't
seen one make the news in years.

Looking at my image archive, it seems to
actually average about every 45 days. It normally takes
from 10 to 30 minutes. Depends on how many updates I have
to do. That includes restoring my base image, updating,
creating new base image. My OS is on a small SSD (64gb)
dedicated to it.

You might want to look into wsus. You can save yourself a
lot of time and bandwidth...

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

Makes doing offsite tech support easier too. No waiting
around, no depending on the users internet connection.


I don't do tech support, and Windows updates have never
been a problem. I update other apps too when I restore, as
I disable all of the auto updates.

You must be one of those rare cases then. Windows update has
had problems going back years on various Windows flavors. MS
has had to issue 'fixes' to correct it, multiple times.

Bottom line is it's normal system maintenance for me.
Started imaging with XP, which was easy to break. I
prefer to install my OS one time only.

This copy of XP was installed over a decade ago. I've yet
to reload it. Had to restore from image once or twice due
to hardware failure. (HD), but, not due to any software
issues, uhh, no.

XP was - and might still be - a target for malware, which I
meant by "break." Win 7 wasn't quite as bad. As I said
Win 10 is the best of the lot. I can't confirm getting any
malware on Win 10. Maybe the hackers are on vacation.

I respectfully disagree with your best of the lot opinion
concerning Windows 10, for reasons I've already stated. But,
hey, if it works for you...it's all gravy. I haven't taken a
vacation in years. Maybe I should consider doing that
sometime this summer. I could probably use it. Hackers aren't
all bad you know. Some of us are quite useful in a positive
sense.

I have no use for them.

One advantage to re-imaging is that while I don't do it
regularly, when I have done it, the PC performance improvement
was substantial. In fact, I think when people buy a new PC and
see a huge increase in performance, I'd bet that a good part of
that, maybe half, is that they are starting with a clean
machine again. If they just did a system restore, they'd also
see a good boost in performance.

The performance boost you're seeing is the file layout.

If that's the case, then doing a disk defragmentation should also
give a similar boost. I've never seen that happen. I think there
is a lot more there that gets added, corrupted over time that
degrades the OS performance.

A disk defrag usually cannot for a variety of reasons, restore all
files to contiguous blocks, where as image restoration does do that.
You get the performance boost in file access time with contiguous
blocks of data. Otherwise, your machine is searching for the bits and
pieces which make up the file(s) you're accessing. If you did a
defrag on an ancient OS like DOS, you would see the performance boost
I'm writing about. Windows, oth, doesn't give a defrag program the
opportunity, even if you do a 'boot time' defrag.

Based on what you've written, it's clear to me that you don't have a
firm grasp on how files are actually stored on your hard disk. I
don't fault you for that, mind you, most people don't know/could give
a rats ass. The only time it becomes important is for the purposes of
data recovery.


Now we have the guy who thinks recommending Firefox as a supported
browser to use on Win XP for the future, telling me that IDK how
files are stored on a hard disk. ROFL!



Needless to say, when you tell Windows to 'delete' a file, it didn't
really delete it.

No **** Sherlock. You just figure that out?

There is no point in going any further with you. I could point out
that over the years I've seen many authorities list many reasons that
a PC with a clean install slows down over time. Most of them focus
on the fact that all kinds of software has been installed, removed,
re-installed, corrupting things, adding startup items, etc. Sure,
they include fragmentation as ONE reason, but it's not the only
reason or the prime reason. For one thing, the OS files, most of them
should not become fragmented, because they stay where they are put.
It's the deleting, copying, installing, deleting of other files
that creates most of the fragmentation. But you can go on continue
to believe what you want to believe in your tin hat world. How's
that burner phone doing? ROFL