OS half life
Posted in daily
My operating system is playing up on me today. They are days like that, when little things go wrong, apps quit, settings disappear - one feels a little out-of-sync, ones OS a little unreliable, unstable - and one doesn't really know why.
It reminds me of a paper I read on Dr Dobbs last year entitled "What scruft is". Unfortunately, I can't find it anymore .. Basically, scruft is what accumulates over time in your computer, slowing it down, making it less reliable and unstable, until you break down and perform a complete OS reinstall.
Mark from diveintomark.org experienced just that this summer, and posted a paper on "How to reinstall XP in 5 hours or less".
Instructive.