Pain is what motivates folks to do something.
Think image/clone....even if you only do this every six months it's still a lot better than starting from bare metal.
I try to avoid pain.
Did you know it will take you more than 1GB of online updates to bring Windows 7 up-to-date if you start from scratch? This ZDNET article goes over that problem. Seems there's no DVD for the updates you can order, and the method Windows uses of doing some updates, then rebooting, then more updates, then rebooting and so on, it can take 24 hours or longer online to complete the task. There may be a way to cut that time down.
"There is a workaround, as I discovered. Download two updates before starting the installation process, KB3083710 and KB3102810, and copy them to a USB flash drive. Install Windows 7 with SP1 and leave the network cable disconnected. Install those two updates from the flash drive before connecting to the network and running Windows Update for the first time, and you can cut that horrendous delay down to a matter of a few minutes.
Even then you have many hours of work ahead of you. When I started over, using that workaround, it still took nearly three and a half hours from the time I started the clean install until those 216 important updates were finished downloading and installing."
Have fun!
(I use linux and avoid all that)


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