Reinstall vista? registry cleaner?

Last time I did a reinstall was 1.5 years ago. I don't have any problems and don't see the need to reformat/reinstall. Some people do it twice/year though. Any reason to reformat/reinstall? I use revo uninstaller and regularly clean with ccleaner.

Also, what is the best free registry cleaner out there? I use the CCleaner one but it doesn't seem to get everything. Figure that if I clean the registry and delete unused programs, i shouldn't have to reformat often, right?

 

The only time I reformat is due to virus/malware attack.
I found out computer slowness is caused by bloated antispyware software or bloated security suites. Sometimes by hardware problems ie slow video card or bad drivers.
I also rarely use ccleaner because I don't think it will make my computer run any faster but it won't make it worst.

Recently my computer started to slowdown, I traced it to avg free antivirus software I was using, I replaced it with avira free antivirus and I regain my speed again. Sometimes it's that simple to gain improvement.

 

There's a certain comfort that goes along with familiarity. From my point of view frequency's good!

 

If you don't backup your system, reinstalling Windows yearly is a way to keep problems from developing. On the other hand there's really no rule about it, if your system works well why bother.

About registry cleaners, I use jv16 PowerTools 2009 (I also use CCleaner, only the cleaner section though). I don't think that any of the registry cleaners can be defined as best, jv16 PowerTools has a good reputation.

I also would like to add that with XP Home/pro the registry cleaner had a visible impact in terms of improved performance, with Vista not only I could never see any improvement but some third party programs had to be reinstalled after letting the registry cleaner freely clean. As a result I very rarely use jv16 with Vista, and when I do I'm looking for specific entries.