Should I Reinstall Windows?

[Hi Ho]

I have had my computer for a little over a year now. The thing has been working fine. Except for the annoyingly slow startup that now occurs even on a clean boot. There are some other things annoying me. I can't think of them all. I think reinstalling Windows would make the computer run better and smoother. I just don't want to mess with backing up files. I also don't want to have to activate again because I have done that already in the last 120 days. That phone call made me nervous because I thought they would say I had XP installed on two computers. Is it worth reinstalling? What would a repair do? Would a repair erase all of my stuff?

Here are my system specs

ASUS A7V333 Mother Board
AMD Athlon 1.8ghz CPU
512mb 333mhz DDR RAM
60 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
6GB 5200 RPM Hard Drive
GeForce 4 ti 4800se 128mb Graphics Card
Plextor 24/10/40x CDRW
Acer 40x CD-ROM
Windows XP Home Edition
Cable Modem

[blockcipher]

Have you checked the obvious? Like scanning for virus' and spyware. Also, remove all the un-necessary startup programs using 'msconfig'. You might also want to check out http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm and see what services you can live without. I think a couple of these things might speed up your machines.

Hope this helps!

[Hi Ho]

I run SpyBot and Adware regularly. I have removed all unessacary processes and startup items.

[HAL9000]

You can do a repair installation and that usually doesn't require re-activation... and even if it does, activation is a painless process... they don't accuse you of having it on more than one machine. There was one month that I did several upgrades and had to phone in three times.