Having had to go through this procedure recently on my own system, I'd say it can cause operational problems. :eek:

I just haven't seen a corrupt registry like Craig has, but I've seen damaged/improper key entries in the registry, which do cause problems. The problems are specific to the damaged entry (a specific app, or a specific Windows function).

No question, configuration files are safer and easier to manage.

I have seen one kernel panic since the Public Beta came out, a result of trying to install some long-forgotten version of Norton Futilities. I've never resinstalled the OS, except when upgrading to a new version.

I think the fact that this discussion has naturally shifted from a question about OS X stability into Windows Registry issues should tell you a lot. Where there's smoke, there's fire. When there are no significant issues, the discussion moves on.

I've reinstalled my OS twice so far (in about a year and a half). Once right after I got the laptop (I like to always have a clean install with the options I want), and again when I completely messed up my user settings by playing around too much with NetInfo. I'd say, unless you enable root and are too curious about your system (e.g. deleting system files, removing swap page files, modifying core system settings in NetInfo Manager, running the command `sudo rm -rf /`, etc) you shouldn't have a problem...and even if you do the above, you'll only have a problem occasionally ;)

Most accurate BOINC calculations
 

Speaking of the OS X stability, there is something I found interesting. I use a software called BOINC, basically it is a distributed computer processing platform. I run services for "Predictor@home" On their website ( http://predictor1.scripps.edu/ ) they report the reliability of the calculations of various operating systems: Windows Linux and Darwin (Darwin includes the Mac OS). Right now (as of today) Darwin has a computational pass rate of 95.9, windows has a pass rate of 91.0 and Linux has a pass rate of 92.4. That is over the hundreds of millions of calculations (if not billions) that they have the computer perform, and then check against what the results are known to be. Overall I'm very pleased with Mac OS X's stability. There are two applications that have caused my computer to completely halt (I have an iBook G4). They are Celestia (in one of their versions they had some trouble with one of their graphics engines, causing certain GPU's to freak out) and Virtual PC running Windows ME... sigh. It is amazing to me that windows stability issues are so extreme that they can affect me, all the way over here in the Mac world. ;) No, it's okay, I'm not one of those people that hate Microsoft to such an extreme that they find every chance and excuse to ridicule them. I have found, though... and I know that a lot of you are going to hate me for this... that my old iBook G3 is more stable than my new iBook G4. The first day I got my G4 I put Celestia on it and found that problem. What a way to get introduced to a brand new computer! I put one of my favorite apps, Celestia, on it and it freezes! Oh well, I'm over it now. And the newest version of Celestia doesn't even cause the problem any more. I have noticed, though, that with every new release of the Mac OS, it just gets stabler and stabler.

Juz10mac

My subjective feeling is that Apple keeps a much tighter rein over what apps can and cant do to the system either when installing or when running. Whereas (less so with XP, but still...) look at the average constant user of Windows, and my god it usually looks like a dog's breakfast of startup items for a thousand useless things, apps installing themselves all over the place, mods, hacks, tweaks, enhancers, workarounds... eesh, it makes my skin crawl...OK control-freak nature showing. And most of those things have installed themselves as part of a 'suite' of tools without the average user knowing why they need "crap.app startup optimizer" sitting in their system tray.
I used to be a Windows stalwart, happily tweaking, rebuilding and reinstalling everyday. But then I discovered OSX and have found the beauty of actually using my computer to get things done! Join us, join us!

We need to separate stability and the issue of reinstallation/corruption, I think.

Windows 2000/XP and OS X are pretty equal in terms of stability -- the actual frequency of crashes that bring down the whole system, or require you to power off in order to get control of the system back. Most people have no issue with either, and can have uptimes of months and years (the limiting factor being application installs/uninstalls, which relate to DLL and registry issues that build up on Windows systems).

In terms of the OS needing to be reinstalled periodically, there is a huge difference between Windows and OS X. That is one of the main reasons I switched over a year ago.

If you don't ever install or uninstall software on a windows system, of course it will run fine for an indefinite period of time -- but that doesn't describe many desktop users.

The Windows Registry is a horrible idea made worse by the fact that it not only mixes together critical hardware-specific information with application-specific configurations, it is a binary file that is easily corruptable and provides a central point of failure, while having no ability to maintain itself. Add to that the everpresent DLL hell, which guarantees that over time a system will gain more and more potentially incompatible bits of code that can never be safely removed.

(Some people have complained that OS X does have a "registry", the NetInfo database, which is a binary file that contains some configuration information. Even if your NetInfo database were borked, you could boot into single user mode, delete it, and have a functional system when you reboot. Try booting a Win2k/XP system to a recovery console, deleting the registry file and restarting the system.)

The cherry on top of all the Windows issues is the complete intermingling of application configurations and the particular OS install, which means that a reinstallation of the OS REQUIRES a comeplete reinstallation from scratch of most application software. Sometime you can copy over preference files from old applications, but frequently not, and they are rarely comprehensive.

Contrast this to OS X, which maintains its configurations in controlled, segregated and protected plain-text files. There is no configuration file on the entire system (that I'm aware of) that has a user preference and a hardware configuration in the same place.

The hardware is handled by the system, and attempts to modify the configuration will require you to pass security checks. Even if you screw up a modification, chances are the system will detect the error on the next boot and be able to recover that single file with a sane default or auto-configuration. The realm of things that can truly stop the system from booting at all is pretty narrow, as explained by Craig above, since the Kernel and Kernel extensions are much more narrowly tailored.

Even when you DO reinstall OS X, you can literally drag all your applications to the new system and start using them right away. If you drag the Preferences from your old user Library, 99% of the user-specific configuration will be maintained. If you copy the Application Support directories from your old install, that will often keep the old caches and other configurations a specific app might have. None of this depends on what hardware is used, what user is setup, or what OS version is being discussed. It Just Works.

As an example, I got Tiger early, so I backed everything up, and did a clean install (which I always do for OS Installs -- old windows habit that I might break someday!). I just copied over the applications, utilities, preferences and application support directories from the backup for the stuff I wanted on the new system. All the programs still worked just as I had them set up previously, all i did from scratch was set up the OS-specific preferences and configuration (for obvious reasons).

Once I was up and running, I realized that my printer wasn't fully supported (missing utility features under Tiger, topic for another thread). Unfortunately, printing graphics is part of my job so I had to go back to Panther. I made a new backup, put in the Panther install CD, did a format and install, and then copied over the applications, utilities, preferences and application support directories from the new (Tiger) backup. Everything works perfectly, and it took a total of about an hour.

Resinstalling a Win2k or XP system is something that would usually take a day or two and a lot of digging and copying of random files to try and keep configurations, but inevitably you'd wind up having to start from scratch with half your software.

That was a good, substantive post, nmerriam. Thanks.

Yes, great post. Something I'll use when asked about key differences in the systems.

I just installed Tiger clean, and moved in my prefs and other files one by one as needed. This helped me learn a lot about how all these things work and where they are. It is something that would have been completely impossible with Windows, since the registry cannot be safely/effectively copied. It is fascinating to run an app and see it in default configuration, close it, copy one file, open the app and it's just as you last used it on another OS.