http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker74.html

What To Do When Your Computer Bogs Down
by Jeffrey A. Tucker
Editorial vice president of http://www.Mises.org
September 19, 2006

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Relentless development in software, hardware, and the online world means living life in Beta with all its attendant problems. Each machine is different, and yet the Windows-based machines I’ve worked on for the last four months have all had the same trouble, and require the same steps to resolve it. Some of the problems result from the very first days that the computer was fired up, but use (along with spyware, adware, malware, viruses, and enormous software muck) only makes them worse.

Here are the steps that have worked for many Windows machines in recent days.

***AND***

That’s it! Your machine should be vastly improved in every way.

(Please don’t write to tell me about the wonders of Mac [granted] or of the feasibility of end-user Linux systems [please!]. You aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know, so I’ll just delete your email.)

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What you are describing is a phenom which I believe is generally called winrot. (I’ve blogged about it. https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/02/24/prepare-for-winrot/ on several occasions.)

The only real solution is to reinstall from scratch.

Some fanatics urge a quarterly reinstall. I usually try during the End Of Year holidays when stuff is slow. The week between Christmas and New Years is deadly slow.

It assumes, and presumes, that you:

(1) have good backups of all your data.

(Entertaining exercise. Hand the corporate user a new laptop. Take the old one. And, then you see just how good your backup and recovery strategy is. I have had the equivalent happen to me when a hard disk drive dies and the first time I lost four months of work. Now I am a fanatic about backup and recovery. My worktop has been replaced three times with no loss. My personal one probably would be OK, but not as good, nor as crisp and easy.)

(2) have all your program distribution media. (All those darn CDs!)

(3) have all your program serial numbers (All those darn 29.5 character random strings. Sometimes on the last page of manuals.  Sometimes on folders. Sometimes on envelopes. Sometime on convenient easy to lose slips of paper.)

Arghhhh!!!