louise <louise@invalid.invalid> wrote in news:4tpgk4F15b86lU2
@mid.individual.net:

> Also, if you "reinstall" from an image, you're taking all
> the stuff you're complaining about with you to your new
> installation - aren't you?
>

No - because I would just reinstall an image of the OS and it's upgrades,
plus all the programs like MS Office, Firefox, AV, firewall, etc. that I
would always load. That would save me about 85% of the time in reloading
everything. If I do it once a year, I can then pick and choose from all
the other programs I want to reinstall (ie which anti-spyware programs I
thought were best, registry utilities, audio/video codecs, etc.).

The codecs alone with shockwave and other plugins can wreak havoc with
video files and cause major conflicts (ffmpeg/ffdshow alone adds all kinds
of strings to the registry as does all the other codecs).