How to immortalize a XP? (A general discussion)

Anybody that used windows XP long enough has experienced a system failure that lead to reinstalling the XP and probably formatting the drive.

Some people have evolved beyond this trivial issue by becoming experienced enough users to recognize what might be a threat to their system and simply not use it or recover from it without breaking a sweat, but some of them and the rest of us use other means to avoid the ever annoying creative things that kill or maim Windows. So I'm merely gathering opinions.

How do you stay above and/or clean, all crap - being, bloatware, malware, virus or other harmful trash that you "surf".

Arguing which is the best ANTI whatever software is simply pathetic.
A single Antivirus/Malware/Trojan/Whatever is never good enough, and you can't have multiple of each type since the good ones aren't really compatible with each other.

Sooner or later, if the machine you use is meant to provide entertainment for you, you will end up executing something thats going to screw you over. Regardless if it suckered your ANTI whatever software or you just told them to ignore it and took a chance any way.

Choice A)
Amateur level:

- Brake one, get a new one.

You screw up, you clean up - the old way. Tedious virus cleaning, saving precious data, formatting, reinstalling, optional whining on forums for help, calling friends and all that jazz.

Cons: Its tedious, nerve cracking, unsafe for important data and simply not efficient.

Pros: It sorta makes you learn better.

Choice B)
Advanced level:

- Set clones ready to replace damaged parts.

Using system recovery/archiving software.
Its done by saving selective parts of your OS/content/information/whatever to a file as backup and when the data in question screws up you restore/copy/clone from the file you saved it in as a backup copy.

Cons: The time/space consumption is way variable. You have to make backup every time you modify your important data and thats not efficient even through automated schedules. And if the data in question is your OS or something that dynamic the exercise becomes quite useless if you are doing allot on that OS/Whatever - its a waste of time to keep track of all changes you made on it so you can backtrack all your steps - its like that simply because everything you add/remove/modify doesn't necessarily go bad right way, and by the time it does you have added/removed/modified several of other things that you lose and need to do again if you restore at the point where you don't have the thing that went wrong. Sadly the bastords from M$ haven't bothered to make a utility that can keep track of any changes made to the registry at any point by any program thats not included or authorized by microsoft, so when you don't trust a software piece, you can tell that utility to "track that wretched piece of binary code and be ready at any point to revert any changes made at least to the registry.".

Pros: Its faster than choice A

Choice C)
Somewhat PRO level:

- Isolate one or more terrain and retain purity.

Virtual machine usage. I'm yet being asked allot of times to explain that so I'll save anybody the question here and write it in terms for the completely ignorant on that matter - Imagine your PC (the hardware part) was a large aquarium. Each software was a fish and the OS was the environment (water etc). Your fish normally swims around, when you pollute the environment most of everything is screwed, tough fish can pollute and they can kill each other just like a virus or a bad thing can kill them all. To avoid this you put little aquariums in the big one and keep one or more separate "ECO" system having its own fish and environment, only when you are sure that something in the small aquariums is good to use in the big one (you have tested it in the disposable ones and you are sure/satisfied) you then transfer from one to another, but at any time you can choice that some of the little aquariums are going bad and you can replace them with brand new ones with the ease of a click.

Cons: Each virtual machine consumes some resources on your PC, its somewhat limiting, to be most efficient you must keep the Main OS and installation to a minimum basics and its highly recommended that you don't browse the web through it since the web is where most of the nasty stuff comes from. And you also need some good deal of experience with computers. It would have been so easy if microsoft made a similar environment where you can start from scratch or a chosen point without being irritated in the process.

Pros: If you know what your doing you might never need to reinstall windows again due to unwanted failure because you can simply use the disposable virtual box at any time to do all of your "risky" business having no way (so far) to affect the main box since its a totally isolated environment...

Choice ?)

Anything you could suggest?

If you are using one of the following methods please specify the tools you use and mention anything out of the ordinary that needs to be noted.

I haven't used ANY of them. I do work, play and browse on my machine, i never had a virus or anti virus since i got my machine till now, and thats about 5 years.

1 Forced reboot because of a game crash.
0 OS reinstall
0 Major issues.
Over 300Gb of software games included.

Now i got a virus and my windows is dead so i wish to organize my system once and for all.

I'm sure many people want the same thing so, thank you for the time and attention - hope you contribute.

 

and if you do run into anything bad attributed to malware, the steps here are pretty much fool proof, and have cleaned each and every computer i've thrown at it.


as for me, my last xp installation was on my computer for about 3 years, without a hitch...i didn't make any backups and i disabled system restore (not recommended, but i've never used it)

i was just very smart on what was installed and what websites i visited (most of the time )

i now have vista and i hope i can keep it going like xp...

now i will admit, prior to service pack 2 and earlier versions of windows, i was reinstalling about every 6 months, but things are alot better now.

 

I just keep a xp disk on hand that has been run through nlite. Update it every 6 months and keep on hand just in case.

No plans on vista, probally skip the new improved vista coming out next. There is simply no reason to have it.

When xp becomes just to old or whatever, I will jump to a flavor of lynux. I am thinking more and more about it.