Anyone reload their OS to fix slow PC?

I use Acronis, whenever I update I roll back to the previous and latest image file when I last updated a few things and build again from there.

The PC thinks it’s running a fresh install of Windows permanently!

My workstation always runs as quick as the day I bought it.

Acronis is my one big reason for sticking with Windows over OSX.

Could be registry rot. The registry is a database maintained by Windows. It basically is a record of where everything is (programs, devices, etc). It tends to grow over time and only rarely cleaned up by installers, etc. An O/S reinstall may clean it up, but a wipe/rebuild will be much better. In that case you'll need to be sure you've got installers for every single thing you use on the PC. Having a back-up before you proceed is also a really important step. It's been 5 years since I've owned a Windows machine, so I wouldn't trust myself to give you a blow-by-blow about how to proceed. But I do remember that the registry would be something of a mess after a few years. It can burn up quite a few CPU cycles as the computer hunts through it. It might always be a good idea to surface-test your hard drives and run whatever diagnostics you can get your hands on.

Good luck!

I've often wanted to try the "smash it to bits with a baseball bat" method but have so far resisted.

Thanks for the feedback (yes, even the baseball bat scenario). Not trying to turn this into "PC Support", but appreciate the insights. I do have some PC knowledge, and had already pursued the following:

- I did start by looking at the start-up menu, a well as running Task Manager. TM showed the System Idle at 90% and above, and under the Performance tab the CPU and Memory were both low utilization. If something is running in the background, it's not obvious at this point.
- I use AVG free, so ran a scan (no issues). I don't leave my PC connected to the internet...only when I'm using Reaper/plugins that require the connection. I do see when I reconnect that AVG does all if its downloads, and that can bog things down during that time period.
- Defrag says I don't need to do anything...won't even let me initiate.
- Used CCleaner to try to clean up space and do as much registry cleaning as possible, but I know the registry is still likely a mess.
- Ran the Windows disk utility, which freed up about 19GB of additional space.
- Running chkdsk right now to see if I can identify if it's a hard drive issue on my C: drive, where the OS and all apps reside.
- Will run a check on the RAM next.

Both hard drives are 300GB Western Digitals, and both are half or less than half full.
My AMD CPU can be over driven, but I've never done that...even though I've been tempted.

Wondering if the first step would be to upgrade the HDDs to SDDs. I'm guessing that would be a clone process. (And it could make my PC quieter as well.)

And per Michael, I know a complete rebuild would be the best. I'm just really scared of 13 years of apps, plugins, drivers, etc. and getting my RME and Waves plugins to work right again. Shame on me for not documenting all of that over the years, but here I am.

I'll keep you posted after the hard drive and memory analysis.

Rebuild the OS
- backup your files
- put on a condom
- wipe the drive completely
- reinstall the OS
- copy back important docs and data
- only install the software you need
- remove condom.

And does it go on the computer?

Update:

- Ran a full Windows backup. Took 2.5 days. Failed at the end.
- Ran a disk image backup. Failed at the end.
- Ran a disc recovery to DVD. Worked

So it appears now that I'll have to manually copy my files/programs over to my external drive, do my due diligence to ensure I have my credentials in order for my plugins and Reaper, and proceed with wiping the C: drive and reinstalling from scratch. Hoping I don't just hose my interface and software up.

It’s fitted onto the hard di*k.
Prevents data leakage. 🥴

This reminds me of an issue I ran into on Windows some years back.  Whatever anti-virus software I was using at the time insisted on checking every file that was being written. This would hardly be noticeable on a spread sheet, but if you were writing a mix or running a compiler then it would absolutely kill performance.  I hope that's gotten better, but at the time I had to change the option of scanning to something I'd do manually whenever I felt I needed to.

That's toooo old school for modern tech, Eric.  I prefer, depression era approaches: I click my heels together three times and repeat, "There's no place like tone" until it works.

The built-in antivirus in win10/11 is pretty good. No need for a 3rd party program.