Savvy Windows Troubleshooting

You know the drill. Windows starts to show error messages, slows to a crawl when opening programs, and never seems as fast as it used to be. The one universal solution (unless it's hardware related) is to reinstall Windows and start over fresh.

Instead of spending hours troubleshooting or waiting for a machine that's never been defragmented, reinstalling Windows could be real time saver. Yes, you'll need to dig up your driver CD's that are stashed in a closet somewhere and backup all your files. After that's done, it's only a few hours to have "new" computer again.

Reinstalling Windows is the best possible way to speed up your computer rather than installing new hardware. It frees your computer from debilitating and crash inducing fragmentation and eliminates all the junk that Windows has accumulated over the months or years it's been installed. Your computer will be completely fresh again, with a new lease on life, and no spyware, adware, or other garbage clogging up the works. . . Maybe this time around use Firefox and don't visit questionable websites or download software from strange places.

I decided months ago, that whenever Windows starts heading south, or if there's an issue I've spent more than a few hours troubleshooting, I'll simply reinstall Windows, that is assuming, that I've kept a complete backup of my documents, photos, and music. This is easy to do with an external drive as they are getting cheaper all the time.

My mother's home computer is years overdue for a reinstall. I tried to defrag the machine over a year ago, and remember the progress hanging around 6% for over an hour. . Reinstall to the rescue!

If you've never reinstalled Windows, backup all your files and call the most capable geek that you know. Be sure to provide all the CD's that came with your computer and have the documentation/receipt that came with your computer in case the geek needs to find drivers.

If you're lucky enough to be running Windows on a virtual machine, a reintall should take less than an hour. Parallels installed Windows XP virtually in about 20 minutes on friends' new iMac. Most virutal machine software wil also enable you to create "snapshots" to save the current state of the virtual machine. When windows gets hit by a virus or serious crash, reverting to the snapshot will save time reintalling Windows on the virutal machine over again. (Of course your documents saved after the snapshot was created will not be spared, so keep a backup). Create a snapshot of a fresh installation of windows, or a snapshot after your essential programs are installed, or keep both. Then you'll be on your feet and using a fast, new virutal Windows in less than 10 minutes, just in time for that meeting with a client who is running PC-only software.