[dayglored]

> Done it many times when doing bare-metal upgrades. The downside is having to re-install all the software.

True, but doing in-place upgrades has its downsides too. I believe in ripping out the OS about every two years regardless, and reinstalling everything, because:

• Windows (and most OSes) gets stale after a couple years, sooner with heavy use.

• Windows updates can cause applications to get weird, settings to drift, assumptions to go bad.

• It makes you find all your app install media and license keys, which is a good thing.

• It's a chance to clean out all the stupid cruft and programs you installed that you ended up not using>

and so on.

[tacticalogic]

I believe in ripping out the OS about every two years regardless, and reinstalling everything,

I do it about every 3 years, and start with a new MB, CPU, memory, and HD. A good case and PS will usually be good for 2-3 cycles of that.