i completely destroy oses and hardware. i've been named at my school and home by friends and teachers a killer of hardware. I have done far more good than bad, but when you deal with comps for many hours a day, the bad adds up. i dont know why, but my luck seems to be crappy. I've killed hard drives accidentally with software (osx actually) irreparably, I've chipped cores down to non-working status. i've accidentally put 2.3v through poor 1.5v cpus, the list goes on. did i mention that I've had at least 12 gallons of water spilled either through, in, from, or around my computer in the last six months alone? I've had over a quart go over my video card, while in operation under full load, but it still works (using it now). It seems that a lot of stuff I break is bad luck and is either easily fixable or completely destroyed. and yes, the rate of destruction of oses is faster than hardware. luckily i keep my registry entries (only for the specific programs) backed up so a reinstall of most of my software is just a 30 second frenzy of clicking and adding registry entires. btw, unreal tournament 2003,2004, and 2004 demo can be used under a fresh reinstall with just adding the proper registry entries. the only software I reinstall with windows is itunes and mbm 5, along with drivers. I have the two drivers (mobo and vid) in a folder so no downloading is necessary. overall, a complete reinstall of my os along with skinning and all software operational takes less than an hour