In this thread I just wanted to go over a few ways for people to keep their install of windows healthy without having to re-install in the event of a bad system file or blue-screens, or anything like that.
Check Disk
This one is pretty well known. Check Disk (chkdsk) is built in to windows as a disk repair utility. check disk by itself doesn't do a whole lot except for try to identify bad hard drive sectors, but when appended with "/F" it will attempt to take those bad sectors and reallocate them. Additionally when appended with "/R" it will attempt to repair any issues you may be having with your hard drive. It can be very useful when you have files that end up in bad sectors of your hard drive and you'd like a simple way to attempt to fix them.
System File Checker
System File Checker (SFC) is a utility built into windows (xp-8) that allows windows to automatically check and repair all of the system files. Another very useful utility. This is great in the event of bad system files or bad files in the dll cache. There's a usage for it in windows and a slightly different one in the recovery console:
*Verify only checks the system files, scannow fixes them
Non-Destructive Repair Installations
There are ways of reinstalling windows completely without harming any of your data for every version of windows. This will automatically delete all of your windows files and reinstall them from your installation media. Do this when you feel like you need to reinstall but you really don't want to lose all of your data. Here's the different processes:
Windows XP:: insert the CD into the disk drive, restart and boot into the windows installation disk like you normally would for a clean installation. Go through the steps until step 3 where it will give the the option to "press "R" to repair this windows installation." Pick that, obviously. After that go through the installation as normal and when you finish all of your settings will be the way they were before.
Windows Vista/7:: Vista and 7 are exactly the same for conducting a repair installation. You have to be able to boot into windows (Which is a huge flaw since this comes in handy the most when you CAN'T boot to windows. Once you're at the desktop and have your installation media ready, start windows setup. Instead of installing windows from scratch choose to "upgrade windows." From there continue the installation as normal and when it finishes everything will be as it was before.
Windows 8 / 8.1 :: In windows 8 there is a repair installation built in. All you have to do is hold down the shift key when you click restart to bring up the advanced startup options, click troubleshoot, and click "Refresh my PC." This will fully automate the process. Take care not to press "Reset my PC" or it will wipe your hard drive.
Tools and Utilities
Ccleaner
Okay so most of you know about Ccleaner, but for those that don't I'd like to give it a quick little mention. Ccleaner is a great program for cleaning up your hard drive. The good news is that there's only really 2 buttons you necessarily need to know, and that's "Analyze" and "Run Cleaner" at the bottom left and bottom right of the screen respectively. This is great for cleaning out temp windows files, event logs, temp internet files, crap left over from other programs, and quite a bit more depending on what you wish to check and uncheck from the cleaner options on the left side of the pane.
On the very left of the Ccleaner windows you will see a button that says "Registry". This is one of the best and least destructive registry cleaners that I have ever used. That being said, still back-up your registry before running it and give the list a once-over to make sure it isn't deleting anything overly important before running it. I normally don't bother with registry cleaners but this one is the best one from what I've found.
Right under the registry button is a "Tools" menu. These tools consist of "Uninstall" , "Startup" , "File Finder" , "System Restore" , and "Drive Wiper"
Uninstall is a good program uninstaller and seems to work a little better than uninstalling from Control Panel>Programs and Features. I have no proof of this, but after using it near every day for months now it's a good educated guess.
Startup is a tool to enable/disable windows startup entries. Only keep what you absolutely have to keep here, I update everything weekly and therefore have turned off any and all automatic updaters that come with certain programs. It saves RAM, a little CPU usage, and startup time.
File Finder and System restore are pretty self explanatory, I won't delve into those too deep for the sake of not insulting your intelligence.
Drive wiper is a nice utility that has the ability to clear an entire drive or to write over all of your free space, protecting any deleted files you may not want being undeleted from being accessed by prying eyes. I run this almost once a week. It seems like it may increase write speeds of the drive when writing to previously written over sectors but I haven't tested that extensively either.
Defraggler
This is a better defragmenting tool than the one built in to windows. Seems to free up more space and help read speeds on drives that fragmented.
Windirstat is a handy utility that analyzes your drive and gives you a nice graphical view of what files are taking up how much space. Very handy if you're running out of room and want to see what you can get rid of.
DupeGuru is a nice program that hunts through your hard drive searching for duplicate files and giving you the option to remove them. Another very handy utility for those who are looking to free up some HDD space. This isn't free software but I'm sure there's a crack somewhere.
Seatools
Seatools is a diagnostic tool made for seagate hard drives. Very handy and accurate if testing a seagate drive. You can run Seatools from inside of windows or you can make a bootable .ISO file and boot Seatools from USB or CD/DVD and it will scan the HDD for defects and then attempt to recover bad sectors.
Western Digital Diag
Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostics is basically Seatools for Western Digital drives. It scans the hard drive and attempts to recover bad sectors.
MemtestX86
This is a nice bootable tool that allows you to test the RAM sticks in your computer for defects. It's a pretty thorough test and it's one of the best out there.
Hirens Boot CD
Hirens boot CD is a great collection of fixes, tools, and utilities for just about anything. All of the commercial software was removed after hirens 10, but luckily someone rebuilt the .ISO and added all of the good stuff in plus a little more. It's useful for just about anything you can think of and the rebuilt version includes a win7 PE environment loaded with tools and also a winXP PE environment equally loaded with tools. I use this literally every day, it's a must have.
[lawngreen]Prime95[/color]
Prime95 is a great tool for stress testing your stuff. I think it's important to stress your system every once in a while for several reasons. You can watch and see if certain cores shut down under high stress, and monitor the temperature of your system under stress, and if you have any sort of overclock you can use software like this to test if it's stable or not. I like to use speedfan for monitoring my overall temps and adjusting fan speeds and coretemp for monitoring specific CPU core temps.
Portable Programs As suggested by mack doun
Portable programs are programs that do not require a windows installer and run completely from RAM instead of being installed to the registry. These programs are less cumbersome on your Windows installation and don't have any long lasting effects on your system whatsoever. These are also nice to put on a USB storage device and carry from computer to computer.
The only drawback is the slight faster speed that installed programs run at as opposed to their portable counterparts.
