It's a bit sad that to keep a computer running smoothly you have to jump through these hoops. I end up with applications building up so much crap in my homedir on linux or appdata / winsxs on windows, I wind up feeling like I need to clean things out once every year or two too.

I try to look at a clean reinstall as a good chance to make sure my backups and restore process are working too. Maybe take a chance to experiment with a different distribution or organize things differently, or new bootloader.