Total refresh

[Thixotropic]

I've been using BI for about a year, getting familiar with it while building out my set of cameras.

I've got BI and Windows pretty much how I want them, but it took a lot of messing around and there was more than a bit of installing and uninstalling various tools and stuff to get everything the way I wanted it.

Now that I know how to get from point A to point B, so to speak, I'm thinking of wiping the system and doing a clean install of Windows and BI with no unnecessary steps or unneeded software. (I'd make a full backup and disk image first, of course.)

Part of what's prompting this is that there are some odd little behaviors I've noticed in Windows and I can't quite track them down- like the BI screen shrinks from full screen to about half-screen every night. It's it's set to 'Maximize frame' it doesn't do that. WTF? So yeah, I'd like a fresh install of everything from the get-go.

Half of me wants to do it so I have leaner, cleaner system, and half of me says if it's not broke, don't fix it.

What say ye? Wipe it out and start fresh, or let it putter along as-is with all the extra hidden cruft and junk?

[TimG]

Hiya,

I'm just emerging from three weeks of pc hell. I never knew a failing pci-e device could cause so much havoc !

1. Com ports not working, so Homeseer X10 didn't work.
2. Usb flaky, so Homeseer z-wave and IR control broken.
3. Programs randomly crashing without useful error messages, and "Reliability History" only showed which program had crashed first today.
4. BI5 grinding to a halt.

I swapped parts between 3 pc's, and eventually figured out it was a satellite receiver card...

So, to answer your question, cut the blue wire. Oops, I meant go for the Windows rebuild. As long as you have back ups you shouldn't lose anything - Acronis allows me to dive in to an image to retrieve a missing file, so hopefully you have something similar.

[broachoski]

Export your BI setting to a USB drive or somewhere so those cameras will be a snap to reinstall to the new BI.