wiping drives clean.

[Conky]

I am getting ready for a new mobo and cpu(Conroe, yeah!) but was interested to see how people here view this process.

 

[dguy6789]

Too many people have the idea that Windows becomes slow over time. This is, in fact, not true at all. The slowness that the user may feel is caused directly by the user's own actions. Registry buildup, spyware buildup, ect... If the user knows what they are doing, they will never have to format their installation, save for extreme hardware changes.

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Too many people have the idea that Windows becomes slow over time. This is, in fact, not true at all. The slowness that the user may feel is caused directly by the user's own actions. Registry buildup, spyware buildup, ect... If the user knows what they are doing, they will never have to format their installation, save for extreme hardware changes.

Yup.

To most people's surprise, Windows is a surprisingly stable and fast operating system. Most problems come at the hands of bad drivers and third party applications,

You can actually make your system much faster with the right tweaks even after a clean install of windows.

I keep my data backed up in case of a HD crash or virus that I don't want to spend the time repairing, but I can't think of any good reason why people want to spend a few days out of every other month just to reinstall everything on their computer. At the worst, reinstall it all, then make an image of your completed install so you are back where you want to be in an hour or so.