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IMHO, this notion that the OS has to be reinstaled every so often is nothing but a placebo for the iignoramnt masses who can't figure out how to diagnose WIndows problems. (I'm not blaming them for this, buthe way.) It is usually recommended by frustrated Tech Support people who know they will get a break for a few days from an angry customer who can't get things working proplery.
The last time I did a full reinstall of Windows was about 4 months ago, when my former boss demanded I reinstall it to solve a prpblem I was having with spontaneous reboots. Of course this did not solve the problem, but at least it kept me from being written up for being uncooperative.
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...was yesterday! 
Both win2000 & Win98se.
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Memory leaks is the price we pay \0
01234567890123456789012345678901234
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Me too (well, last week, but close enough...).
I tend to do a full-blown reinstall (ie format all drives, then install) when one of three conditions is met:
1) The icon tray wraps to three lines of icons
2) It takes > 2 min to logon and get to the plain ol' desktop
3) I run across a program that I don't even remember installing, and I have no idea what it is for
Unfortunately, one of these three happens relatively frequently
Russ
--
Russell Morris
Georgia Institute of Technology
"Lisa, just because I don't care doesn't mean I'm not listening..." - Homer
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The benefit of reinstalling the OS on a regular basis is that it forces you to keep your data and OS truly separate. We use Drive Image and Partition Magic to image a drive with different OS's containing the basic programs, VC, Word, etc., and settings, network etc., In less then 10 minutes I can go from 2K to 9x and not miss a step as far as my data goes. And when my OS starts acting "strange", I can always image the OS containing my core programs and settings back to the original working state. Late last year I had a hardware problem with my OS drive and within a half an hour, I had switch the drive, restored the OS imaged to the new drive and was compiling my VC programs, reading my old email and viewing MyDocuments. I am always interested to hear how other people deal with there day to day problems regarding the “Not Ready For Primetime” life of PC’s. All suggestions welcome!
Michael
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When i want to reinstall i keep a copy of the following directories.
c:\windows\desktop\
c:\windows\favorites\
c:\Program Files\
c:\Documents and Settings\[accounts]\Desktop
c:\Documents and Settings\[accounts]\Favorites
Then i delete windows and winnt directories,
reinstall OSes and move any usefull files from the
above directories to the new ones.
Latelly i don't care very much about saving c:\windows\desktop
and c:\windows\favorites\ cause i use win98se only for a couple
of games. 
Of course, any data,documents,projects,funny/nasty  videos, mp3, web sites, etc are in a saperate disk.
The major problem is with E-Mails and Address book.
I don't know where they are stored.
Depending on what program\OS you use, they might be on C:\winnt\application data\microsoft\outlook\ or c:\Documents and Settings\[accounts]\Application data\Microsoft\Outlook Express. You see i don't use E-mail at home so i never bother to find out.
How did you handdle E-mails and Address books?
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Memory leaks is the price we pay \0
01234567890123456789012345678901234
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Your emails are kept by default at:
C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Identities\GUID\Microsoft\Outlook Express
where GUID will be a number like {B2966F40-75DA-11D3-8DDE-F2251B5B4937}
What I do is change the location where the message are stored from with in Outlook Express.
Tools | Options | Maintenance | [Store Folded]
I change it to a data protition, say D: This way, after a install my new OS i just make the one change from within Outlook Express and I have my old email with my new OS.
With Address books a just keep a copy of my *.wab file, and using a batch file, backup and/or restore from my data partition.
Michael
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I usually only do a clean install when I get a new motherboard, which has been about once a year, although I've been using my current BP6 for about 1.5 years. I've had 98SE running fine all that time. I'm sure there's some useless junk in the system directory, but on a 12G hard drive, I don't lose much sleep over it. 
--Mike--
http://home.inreach.com/mdunn/
The preferred snack of 4 out of 5 Lounge readers.
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Wow - I have a 20 and a 30 gig, and I'm still short of room. I *do* have 5600 mp3's on my HDD though....
Christian
The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda.
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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I have never reinstalled an OS, but then again I’ve never had it fail so badly it needed reinstalling (the only thing like this that I have done is ‘upgraded’ my OS, but I don’t think that counts). All the time I hear these stories about people who have had endless problems with Windows or a piece of software (strongly it always seems to be a Microsoft product) crashing frequently, corrupting files, etc, etc. I have never seen or heard of this happening on this scale first hand. Even with Windows 95 I can remember it crashed about once a week (if that) and it was usually because I was asking far too much of it. Since I first started using NT I have never turned back.
The closest I ever come to spring cleaning is manually clearing out my %TEMP% directory every couple of days (when it gets over 100MB ) and deleting the occasional temporary file I find lying about in a folder that I don’t think should be there.
David Wulff
dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
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How about a move from NT4 to Win2k, would you upgrade or install a "fresh" Win2k?
I guess you'll get a new pc once in a while, then you get your "spring clean" 
- Anders
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Actaully, when I moved to Windows 2000, I did get new machines, but I probably would have upgraded (if it was an option) to keep any settings.
David Wulff
dwulff@battleaxesoftware.com
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How about every times Windows goes belly up and dies ? I reinstall not on a whim, but when the OS simply ceases to function ( between one week and three months, usually on the longer side, hence I chose three months ).
I expect that a big part of my problem is simply the fact that I use W98 as a development environment where a lot of things get installed and removed, where my PC sometimes runs for a few days, etc., but it's still pretty poor IMHO.
Christian
The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda.
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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Why don't you move to Win2k?
I haven't programmed under Win9x since NT 4.0 was released, but I still remember all the crashes under Win95...
- Anders
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I run a dual boot system - Windows 2000 rocks, but sadly it's too good for writing production code on. I've found that if I make a mistake that leaks memory, Win2K sometimes handles it, so I've delivered the boss code that runs sweet on my machine and brings his down in moments ( he runs W98 and obviously so do our customers ).
It's kind of ironic, I can't use the OS I prefer because it is so stable....
Christian
The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda.
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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How about every times Windows goes belly up and dies
That was kind of the unspoken assumption as to why you would be reinstalling
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Fair cop - I *have* known people who do 'maintenance reinstalls', which to my mind is the equivelant of self inflicted trorture. Nothing worse than being webless for half a day while I reinstall everything - especially as if I reinstall W98 without deleting the IE and Outlook folders in Program Files, I need to do the whole thing again before I can instal VC++.
Christian
The content of this post is not necessarily the opinion of my yadda yadda yadda.
To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion.
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I have to wonder what you people are writing??!! I have used Win 98 as a development platform for years and I hardly ever have trouble with it. True, it is not like Win NT, but all of my Win 98 problems are with other companies drivers. I don't do a lot of COM, so maybe that is it.
BTW, I still use Win 98 because there are a few programs I love/need that only run under Win 98. And who knows when I will have the urge to play DOOM again.
Also, I always thought Win 95 was way more stable than Win 98. I think it's all about drivers.
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