Got to the point where I need to cleanse my system by Reinstalling Windows and all my audio apps and plugins. Not looking forward to this! Ych!

 

lemme cheer you up, im the kind of paranoid, who lets say if something crashes, i got to that point of start over again, cause first its about creating a "safe space" i cant create nothing if im worried about shit, or worried about my system not clean enough for me that time, so if its for a good cause, do it. cause sometimes i bang my head on the wall missing a good oportunity cause my computer got his system erased by a wipe monkey. cheers.

 

1 - Buy a big ext hdd
2 - install windows ---> 1st hd backup
3 - install major audio software ---> 2nd hd backup
4 - install plugin and everything ---> 3rd hd backup
5 - enjoy

 

I do this at least once a year just to get rid of the things I've accumulated over time that I no longer need. I think it's a good practice. You can pretend like you just got a new computer. It can also make you aware if you are a digital hoarder. Take this opportunity to evaluate and assess if you really need all of that software. Try to keep only what you know you will use regularly.

I also do this to myself through a strong psychedelic experience. It's like hitting the reset button. I think that's also a good practice that everyone should try at least once in their life.

 

Also, Acronis True Image or Clonezilla bootable CDs are your friend.

I so detest installing audio OS, it is so time consuming. The easiest part is installing the OS, and then the real nightmare begins. First have to install all drivers, then programs, and then all the freaking plugins one by one... hundreds of them, horrific!

That's why I install new plugins in a test OS, usually virtual machine OS [VirtualBox], and then just copy it manually file by file and registry settings to my production OS, if it's worth using. You also get rid of viruses, malware, and Windows installer garbage this way. My main audio OS is pretty clean and I don't have to reinstall it at any time. Also use CCleaner at times to keep the OS and Windows registry clean. My current OS [XPx64] is 6 years old and still working like on the day I installed it.

 

Last edited: Jan 13, 2017

Or perhaps use a good registry cleaner to save yourself the trouble?

 

on the brightside. nothing beats the snapiness of a freshly installed and well organized os

 

Theese days are luckily gone. I made a dual boot (2 hdds) with the same windows 10 copy. Works perfect. 1 Win only for Music making vst daws etc.
The other for my internet porn
Kiding for everything else i dont watch porn . So my Music windows is allways fresh and in good shape.
And my gaming etc windows gets reinstalled once a year.

 

Exactly what I did. Now I make a backup whenever something major gets changed. DAW update. Audio Drivers Update. etc. So I can always get back to a working version easily if I desperately need to. I learned this the hard way!!

 

I already have multiple external hard drive that house things like my Kontakt and sample libraries. I do have my plugin installers etc backed up onto a separate drive too.

Might do what you suggest though and do a clean install, unused until I've done all backup levels.

 

Yup. Totally!!!!

 

Have you ever actually needed to go back to a backup version? I'm just curious because whenever I've tried to restore in the past it has saved a heap of time, but also ended up creating new headaches due to weird glitches, like leaving out certain drivers or registry entries that were impossible to track down.

 

i did 2times and with sucess, but i dont use win backup, i use AOMEI, very good, relieble and intuitive piece of software, reccomend ...i save my backup on a WD passport always attached to my pc ...

 

Yeah, I don't do the backups incrementally. I create whole backup. I've had to restore once and had no issues. I'd also recommend a different backup utility other than Windows backup.
If I had an extra drive, I'd be doing cloning instead of a backup.

 

I recently ported over my old win7 32bit DAW install to my new comp and after some wrangling of permissions I have my old projects working. Here now begins a 64bit DAW install on another drive... I feel for you, i'm at the point of all sys apps installed, backed up and ready to do the audioz, I have a question/advise request on this topic too ( Not wanting to hijack your thread and kind of staying on topic

To save having to loading Sequencer (S1v3 in my case) over and over to reg certain plugins is anyone using a standalone VST host app to reg vst/i?? I'm wondering if there is something more lightweight that loads/scans faster and therefore be more efficient way to do this....
There was an app yrs ago that claimed to auto install audio apps, was dubious to its potential so never used, however any way to streamline

Cheers
=]

 

This helps a lot when reinstalling
https://ninite.com/

 

You can image your disk once you have everything in place as imaging captures your drivers, registry and even user profile settings.

 

I really miss the days when you could install windows over the old one and everything was left untouched it just fixed some issues and your windows was back to normal again..Now they want to add a folder of the old version on your HD if you choose to repair your windows version..

I also must do a new install of OSX on my Mac Pro as it is getting very slow and nothing i have tried to make it faster is working

 

Last edited: Jan 14, 2017

Reaper starts incredibly fast no matter the number of plugins you have installed. I'm still puzzled with how Cubase and ProTools need a century to start. It is very annoying. New versions of Cubase and ProTools start a bit faster but it's still so far from Reaper's speed.

You can also use VSThost here: http://www.hermannseib.com/english/vsthost.htm