My ancient computer (2003!) has been increasingly iffy (
MASSIVE understatement) the last year or so, and I've tried everything I could think of to debug it and defrag it and de-malware it and de-useless-program it. One day last week, I spent over six hours trying to get the fucker up and running in some reasonable fashion so I could do some work and earn some dough.
I
finally (LAME!) discovered how to implement the System Restore function on this beast (oh sure, they talk about it a lot in
Help and whatever, but is there a freaking link to the place that makes it happen? HELL NO!

).
Anyway, as I said, I finally found the secret entrance to the (non-destructive) System Restore function on this old boogery machine and by god if it's not running like a GDMF Olympic champion again.
Point being: if you're lucky, you may not need a new system at all.
But... I'm a computer moron, so what do I know?