Solved Will VISTA eventually need to be re-installed fresh?

I've been pretty good about maintaining my system. I run a dependable anti-virus program that is updated regularly, defragment the drive, clear out temporary files, disable software that wants to start at boot time, and make sure there's sufficient free space (20% or more) on a regular basis. I removed all the bloatware when I first started with my machine, and don't have a large list of programs that start up when my system is booted. I'm now going on 3.5 years with this particular Vista installation.

However, over the past 6 months or so I've noticed some peculiar hard drive behavior. There will be times when my hard drive becomes significantly active, to the point where any currently running program will stop responding. This will last about a minute or sometimes longer. It also has a tendency to happen when I first start my computer from a cold boot. At first I thought that maybe this is a virus, but I've run malwarebytes and nothing was found.

One of the things I've read about after combing the Internet for possible explanations is a fragmentation of the registry. And, programs that attempt to fix this are generally not reliable. The premise being that over time the registry, being a flat file system, simply gets entries scattered all about and then at various times when it is accessed, the system will need to spend more time assembling all of the registry information required. The only "sure" way to resolve this is to completely re-install the operating system fresh. Is that true?

It depends on the computer. I use Defraggler instead of Windows Defragmentation, because I have noticed the difference in speed. The reason re-installs of operating systems work well is because of all the files a computer accumulates from programs being installed and uninstalled. It builds up over time between temp files, registry files and other files that are not as easily accessible to remove. Processors tend to get more laggy overtime as well, especially on machines older than 3 years.

Bottom line: Clock the CPU and see if it matches the speed that it originally said it would be. Run programs like CCleaner to clear out left behind program files, run a defragmentation software to speed up the indexing process.. Unfortunately computers have baggage too. :P

Thanks for your advice. I hadn't heard of Defraggler. I use Auslogics defragger, which seems to work pretty well... although I had seen it unable to handle a very fragmented drive under Windows XP (needed to run the default defragger first to get the drive cleaned up a bit, then Auslogics was able to function well). I use the option to move system files to the front and periodically do optimized defragmenting (moving files for maximum contiguous free space). I'll have to give Defraggler a try.

True, that there are still plenty of programs that don't clean up completely after themselves despite achieving Windows Certification (which means that when uninstalled no traces are left behind if the customer elects not to retain any data). I don't quite understand how a processor would get laggy over several years of use, unless it was being overclocked for very long periods of time. Quite frankly, solid state is extremely reliable. I'd once heard a computer hardware engineer say that a processor usually becomes obsolete before it wears out.

But in any case, clocking the CPU would be a good idea. In fact, it's probably a good idea to always check the clock speed upon first taking ownership, and save that off for future reference.

By the same token, I wonder if hardware in a hard drive can wear out over time, eventually causing laggy performance. Hard drives are active most of the time, always caching things.

I installed Windows fresh, with an updated version of Vista (Ultimate). Not only did this strange hard drive lag problem go away, a pesky latent recognition of my fingerprint scanner also vanished (I'd have to wait for the "reader not found" status to be resolved). So, there's something to be said with "cleaning house" down to the bare wood floors.