my pc has become unreasonably slow in recent weeks, i keep it in good
shape (defrag, chkdsk, registry cleaners).
Using a registry cleaner is *not* keeping it in good shape. Just the
opposite is true. Here's my standard advice on using registry
cleaners:
Registry cleaning programs are *all* snake oil. Cleaning of the
registry isn't needed and is dangerous. Leave the registry alone and
don't use any registry cleaner. Despite what many people think, and
what vendors of registry cleaning software try to convince you of,
having unused registry entries doesn't really hurt you.
The risk of a serious problem caused by a registry cleaner erroneously
removing an entry you need is far greater than any potential benefit
it may have.
Whether your using a registry cleaner has caused your slowdown I can't
be sure, but it's at least possible.
You don't say anything about the two most important aspects of keeping
it in good shape:
1. What anti-virus and anti-spyware software do you run?
2. What programs do you have starting automatically?
My conclusion is that i want to format and start fresh, c drive is full
of unnecessary crap,
That's the wrong conclusion, as far as I'm concerned, for several
reasons.
1. "Unnecessary crap" on the drive may waste disk space, but it has no
effect on performance. What you have *running* affects performance,
not just what's on the drive.
2. This notion to reformat and reinstall whenever you have a problem
stems from the technical support people at many of the larger OEMs.
Their solution to almost any problem they don't quickly know the
answer to is "reformat and reinstall." That's the perfect solution for
them. It gets you off the phone quickly, it almost always works, and
it doesn't require them to do any real troubleshooting (a skill that
most of them obviously don't possess in any great degree).
But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates, you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for
your system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work
the way you're comfortable with.
Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.
3. Perhaps most important, if you format and reinstall without finding
out what caused your problem, you will very likely quickly repeat the
behavior that caused it, and soon find yourself right back in the same
situation.
