How Often Should I Reset My PC?

There’s no schedule.

Resetting your PC involves backing everything up, reinstalling Windows and applications from scratch, and restoring your data from the backup or elsewhere.

In years past, I advised doing a reset fairly regularly. Recommending an annual reset wasn’t uncommon for active users, including me.

These days, a reset isn’t as necessary as it once was. I’ll review why and when we would want to reset Windows.

Resetting a PC

Resetting your PC gives it a fresh start, clearing out cruft, clutter, and problems. These days, most people may never need to do it. But if your computer feels slow, unstable, or is hit by malware, a reset can help. Sometimes it’s the quickest fix. Of course, always back up first.

Why reset at all?

Like any modern operating system, Windows is unfathomably complex.

Over time, Windows becomes slightly less stable. As updates are applied, old components are replaced, software is installed and uninstalled, configurations are changed, malware is discovered and removed, and so on, the internal state of the system gets messier. Some of it is under Windows’ control, but much is at the mercy of third-party software, like the drivers and applications you install.

The symptoms are subtle. They range from the system feeling slower than it once was to applications not behaving as they should to random crashes and other issues.

A reset starts over with a clean slate, and the process begins again.

That hasn’t really changed. What has changed is that the rate of degradation has decreased dramatically. These days, it’s reasonable to assume that for a casual user, the operating system will remain stable enough throughout the life of the computer itself. A “reset” of sorts happens when the device is eventually replaced.

But, sometimes — particularly for active users who stress their systems in various ways, such as installing and uninstalling lots of different software — a reset might be called for before the computer’s replacement.

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So, how often?

There’s no hard-and-fast answer to how often you should reset your PC.

As I said, it’s possible you may never need to.

I’ll use myself as an example. I used to count on a reset roughly once a year. As you can imagine, I’m a heavy user. I play with a lot of different things and test an assortment of even more. I definitely consider myself at the far end of the bell curve.

And yet, I’ve reset my current desktop — five and a half years old as I write this — exactly once, about a year ago. That’s over four and a half years without a reset.

Your mileage will definitely vary. Rather than looking at a specific timeframe, base it on your system’s performance. At some point, its behavior will reach some threshold and just “feel” like it’s not the machine it once was. That’s a prime time to consider a reset.

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Other times to reset

Besides feeling that your machine has slowed down or become unstable over time, there are a few other times when it’s worth considering a reset. Rather than being driven by explicit concerns, these are opportunities to reset the clock.

Considering a new machine? Reset first.

When you’re thinking about replacing your machine, take a minute to see if it’s really as bad/slow/incapable as you think it is. Whatever’s driving you to consider a replacement is also an opportunity to see if your existing machine might feel like a replacement after a reset. While certainly not guaranteed (there are too many variables), it can save you a lot of time and money when it works. And, let’s face it, getting a new machine incurs many of the same “costs” as a reset; you still have to reinstall all your applications and restore/move your data.

Recovering from malware

I’m constantly amazed at the time people spend trying to remove malware from their computers. They’ll spend hours or days downloading assorted tools, running scans, and following sketchy advice — all without a guarantee that the malware is actually removed.

Aside from restoring an image backup taken before the malware arrived1, a reset is quicker. It’s also guaranteed to remove the offending malware. As a bonus, your machine gets to start over with a clean slate.

Not a silver bullet

I don’t mean to imply that performing a reset is some magical silver bullet that will suddenly fix all the problems you’ve been having with Windows, but it’ll fix a lot of them.

I also realize how Windows performs changes over time. A clean install of the Windows OS from four years ago will behave differently — faster or slower — than a clean install of today’s Windows — even the same version (10 or 11, for example). That’s the nature of software development over time.

But removing the accumulation of cruft is always a good thing.

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