Home computer use: Windows 11 reset, part 1

Self-tutoring about Windows 11: the tutor mentions a reset.

This PC I’ve had just over three years now. It’s seen a lot of use: I did an Ed degree and finished a Comp Sci degree from it. Yet, it’s never crashed, that I recall, nor even bogged down. I guess it must be a pretty good device.

Yet, one of the last virus scans I recall doing on it reported scanning over five million items! Let’s be clear: I don’t use a lot of proprietary software, apart from Windows. Moreover, most of the work I do is with text. Therefore, the idea there could be five million files on this computer seemed absurd.

I re-installed Windows 10 or 11 (not sure which it was) on a different computer about a year ago, from its own rescue disk, after replacing its SSD. I was impressed, afterwards, how much more sleek Windows was compared to before. On the other hand, this computer seems fine, just very bloated. Therefore, I decided to reset Windows 11 on it.

Today, after the reset, I ran a virus scan on the device, which counted around 769 thousand files. I’ve added back a few thousand as well that I’d backed up before the reset. Let’s imagine, for round figures, I’ve added back, from backup, six thousand files. (I’ve noted the counts of the directories and believe it’s about half that). The new C drive file count would then be 775000, compared to over five million before. The ratio of needed vs not seems, from those figures, about 775/5000 or 15.5%.

I recall reading some blogs of Windows veterans, maybe back ten or fifteen years ago, saying they would re-install Windows every six months or so. One can appreciate what might have motivated them. I don’t think I’d reset every six months, but maybe every two years.

Caveat: one must make back-up copies of files one wants to keep before embarking on any such activity. In my case, for instance, the backups amounted to about 43GB.