A while back I rescued some photos for a friend. Her laptop was so stuffed with photos that it choked. It had taken her weeks to train around the UK - everything from dingies to cathedrals - with her new D90, and the beautiful HP seemed a good place to put them. She didn't want to load Ccleaner in case it bit her. When it wouldn't go, she decided that it might help if she lifted it 6" above the table and let it drop.
She was very nice, but blond.
I set about the problem, with two possibilities: Use my Vista recovery that I'd created years ago for my machine, or take the safe route with Ubuntu. I took that latter and it took me hours.
Curious, I then booted it with my home made Vista disc and it was repaired in minutes. Crystal balls come to mind.
So, backups are a wondrous thing but in the early days of PPRuNe computer section, Saab agreed with me. Yes, he did. Just that once. A clean install every so often is like a breath of fresh air. Or more like purging the bowls.
Why now is it so difficult?
Now, one just has to spend a day getting rid of things, or with W10, turning them off. Only today, I've been directed to another four things to be turned off, though the well known magazine did say that 10 was a fantastic operating system - once it'd been contained. I suppose a checklist of things to contain or kill would save a lot of time. To be able to put that OS onto discs in its tamed form would be a blessing.