[bubbacluck]

About once a year I format c: then reinstall Winders. Cleans it all up.

[NCDave]

You have Winders too?....I got the Bubba edition..lol

[oh8eleven]

About once a year I format c: then reinstall Winders. Cleans it all up.
Sorry, that may work for you, but it's really bad advice.
I've owned PCs since the IBM PC-XT and have never had a reason to format and reinstall.
Maybe if you took care of, and protected, your PC properly throughout the year, you wouldn't have to go that extreme.

[Utilizer]

If you look up "System Rescue CD" (I recommend ixquick.com for searches), you can download a free bootable iso which will allow you to run a program called PartImage. You can take a snapshot of your disk/OS (preferably a pristine and malware-free version) and save it so you can reload it later.

Works quite well, and does not touch anything on your computer at all. Of course, you will need an external disk or flash drive to save the image to, but since it only copies the data portions of the drive the image is smaller than the actual drive size itself, assuming you are not using all of it.

[MosesKnows]

<About once a year I format c: then reinstall Winders

Yes indeed! It will be clean and useless.

None of the programs you installed will be available. None of the simple applications you'd grown accustomed to will be available. None of your picture, video, sound, or documents files will be available. Very clean and very useless.

A full recovery or formatting the hard drive is what most people are trying to avoid because of the enormous time and energy it takes to put everything back the way it was.

[ansel12]

That is your advice to the OP?

Mine is to use Glary Utilities, it is mild and safe, and then do a defrag.