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How often should a lap top be professionally tuned up? I've been by some 2 months and others once a year. Just like your automobile, to me, it's better to do preventive maintenance instead of waiting till it's broke.
Any help will be appreciated,
Colin
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Answer accepted by question author
One other point I forgot to make. If you are a developer or someone who installs, tests and uninstalls a lot of programs, you may want to refresh your computer more frequently. Windows is traditionally very sloppy about deleting all of the program files and registry entries. Over time those "orphans" can create problems. So in that sort of situation it pays to refresh your installation or do clean installs or do restores from image copy backups more frequently.
Answer accepted by question author
Well, Windows already does a lot in the background to keep the system optimized. It runs a low priority defragger in the background and you can do things like run Disk Cleanup, uninstall programs you are running.
Ultimately, a clean install at least every year can keep the system optimized.
I reinstall Windows 10 at least once per year, but this is because its my main computer which use a lot. Files accumulate a lot on it that I don't even use any more, a long with programs might use for only a few months.
Answer accepted by question author
Back in the early days of Windows many "experts" recommended re-installing Windows once a year to clean up "loose ends".
It depends, really.
For the "average" user, just keep going until you feel your machine has slowed down "too much" or you think you have been infested with malware.
These days, MS plans to do a "major" feature update to Windows 10 twice a year. We just had the "Fall Creators Update" and the spring update is tentatively planned for March next year. You may want to take advantage of these major updates to "refresh you machine". Rather than constantly doing a "clean install" all the time, which requires you re-install all of your programs try something like this.
Do a clean install
Apply all of the required updates
make an image copy backup
install all of your personal programs, and update them
Do what every customization of Windows you require,
make another image copy backup
So now you have to "known good" backups to work from.
The next time there is a "major update", rather than doing a clean install you can:
restore from the OS plus Applications (the second one) backup
apply the major update
make another image copy backup. (keep the other two also)
If you encounter any problems from the major update, fix them, then make another Image copy backup. You can delete the one immediately before this since it isn't really a "known good" point
you now have 3 known good starting points. Just keep rolling your image copy backups forward from there, refreshing to old image copies and applying major updates. If you don't have significant problems, you may want to extend the interval between the refreshes.
