Re: A8N-SLI LAN1 not working.(solved)

On Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:39:26 -0400, Ourouboros
<Frank.Black@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Geez - talk about opening up a can of worms! :)
>
>The reason I have always (and still do) advocate reinstalling windows
>at least yearly (yes, with all apps and drivers) is for a couple
>reasons. First, active users tend to install/uninstall a good amount
>of software and with Windows' lack of a proper OS-based uninstall
>system, plenty of "cruft" gets left behind. Sure, you can pay for
>uninstaller and cleansweep types of programs, but they're hardly 100%
>accurate either (and are way too complicated for newbies).
>
>Secondly, a lot of driver packages these days bundle in all kinds of
>applets and utilities (the NVidia drivers for example). Sometimes
>there are versioning problems with these installs. Rare or not, I've
>known people who have run across this more than once.
>
>Finally, to address the other comments: Yes, you can do repair
>installs, and yes it does work. Yes, it does save you from
>reinstalling apps, but that's not necessarily a good thing. 9/10
>times I find a significant number of applications that I no longer
>need or that were needed only temporarily (see my uninstall comments
>above). It's quite trivial to track and organize this stuff - just
>keep a simple Excel sheet listing your major apps and utilities, and
>once you have downloaded them burn them off to CD/DVD if you are on
>dial-up. Most times, I can get a development PC setup with Windows,
>Office, Visual Studio, and quite a few other apps inside of a day.
>
>Everyone has their own preferences, but I stand my comments on being
>the "safest" way to do it. Fastest? No, but the best things in life
>are never easy! Besides, can't we all just get along? :)
>
>Take it easy guys!

Like you say, everybody has his own preferences. I disagree with some
of your points, such as XP lacking a proper uninstall utility. It
generally works, especially if the user manually deletes left-behind
directories and files, but some of your points are quite valid. If you
have a "development PC," I'm sure that you CAN get it set up in a day.

If the XP machine is a home PC, however, it can have literally
hundreds of programs and utilities on it, all of which are used and
needed and none of which is fluff. Most of these programs will have
been patched and updated. Many will require passwords that require
some effort in re-entering, and it adds up to many dreary hours of
time that the user usually doesn't really have to spare. This kind of
computer can take literally WEEKS of evening and weekend work to get
set up all over again. For this type of machine, a routine
reformat/reinstall is totally out of the question, even with a
motherboard switch

If you have few apps installed, what are you really gaining by
reformat/reinstall vs repair install -- there's going to be no
left-behind garbage to get rid of with reformatting. If you have many
programs installed, where setting up again is going to take many days,
there's no way that the slight advantage reformat/reinstall confers
can possibly justify the inordinate amount of valuable time spent?

I'm saying that folks should be very careful about making blanket
statements about the ONLY way to do something and about a repair
install being the "lazy" way to go about installing a new motherboard.
There are times when it makes sense, but under most circumstances, the
reformat/reinstall approach is simply UNWISE.

snip

Ron
.

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