John J. Fried is a syndicated columnist for Knight-Ridder. In his most recent column, he offers a piece of popular advice that I think is completely misguided. In response to a question from a read who complains that his computer is slow, he writes:
Even if you treat your PC with kid gloves, delete temporary files of all sorts, defragment, uninstall programs rather than delete them, keep viruses and spyware off the system and update drivers and programs, it is still likely the PC will turn on you.
Endless wanderings on the Internet, the installation and uninstallation of programs and the addition and removal of devices, among many other things, take their toll on the Registry and other crucial files as unavoidable errors in them crop up and multiply.
As much as you hate to hear it, what you should do every 12 to 18 months is wipe the record clean by reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows and all your programs.
In fairness to Mr. Fried, he’s not the only one who believes this. For what it’s worth, I completely disagree.
If you’re experiencing a problem with Windows, there is likely a specific cause for it. Usually that cause is an unsigned driver or a program you installed. It might be an unrelated hardware problem. Whatever the cause, the best thing you can do is track down the actual cause of the problem so that you can fix it. If you simply blow everything away and start over, the most likely thing that will happen is that sooner or later (probably sooner), you’ll reinstall the driver or program that caused the original problem, and you’re right back where you started from.
The logical flaw in this advice is that installing and uninstalling software and devices causes “unavoidable errors” in Windows. No, it doesn’t. Installing a buggy driver (usually one that’s unsigned) can cause errors, as can poorly written programs and uninstallation routines that leave system files behind. But none of these errors are “unavoidable.”
Ed Bott 
I think the advent of features like System Restore and Driver Rollback has also helped the matter somewhat. I had to re-install Windows 3.11 quite a few times, and 98 once, but XP has been fine on one of my machines which has been running it for 3 years now.
Sorry, Ed, can’t agree:
http://rhyndman.typepad.com/robhyndman/2005/01/wiping_your_sys.html
What’s more, this has always been an open secret among my geek friends – just about everyone I know does the same thing ….
I’ve certainly done my share of reinstalls, both for myself and others. But it was a cop out. Instead of actually determining what the problem was, I was reasonably sure that with a reinstall and judicious installation of programs, the problem would be alleviated.
Part of the blame for this kind of instability lays at the fault of the user. We want what we want, when we want it. How many times have we brought home a piece of hardware, and blithely installed uncertified drivers. Despite warnings, and “knowing better”? Why is it we don’t hold hardware companies accountable, for the most basic of cetifications? Why don’t we pack up the item, return it to the store, and let the company know why we returned it?
The same thing applies for software today. Why is it that I can download sofware from major companies today, and when the SP2 security dialog pops up, it’s unable to certify the company? Why are this companies unwilling to take this basic step? Why don’t we hold them accountable?
Despite the pain and annoyance it will cause, both for myself and others, I can’t wait till there’s a version of windows which will not, under any circumstances install uncertified hardaware or software. Maybe then, when sales are threatened, 3rd party companies will step up to the plate.
Maybe the problem is that in prior versions of Windows, the clean install approach to solving intractable problems was often the best and only solution. I had already formed the settled habit of clean installing prior versions of Windows every 3-6 months, a habit that I didn’t break with XP until not too long ago. Even for a Windows XP computer infected with lots of adware and spyware, a clean install seems to be the best way of removing the crud with extreme prejudice.
Having said that, the clean install method seems to be a bit of a copout for those of us who like the challenge of actually identifying and solving discrete computer problems — the equivalent of treating a broken arm with a cast rather than through amputation. And Ed is right: this approach is no long term solution for the person who later reinstalls/uninstalls the driver or software that caused the problem in the first place — any more than merely removing spyware from a computer, without addressing how it got on the machine in the first place, is going to solve THAT problem.
Of course, there may be many good reasons to reinstall, such as the desire to experiment with new configurations and settings, reformat a hard drive that has become riddled with bad sectors (if reformatting actually solves this kind of problem), etc. I have never had a clean reinstall in which I didn’t come up with a better or more desirable way to set up my software and data than I did before.