Windows XP SP2. 1.8 GHz CPU dual core. 7200 SATA WD drives. not very full.
The summary:
After finding CIS hogging my drives, I reinstalled XP without formatting the drive. This kept MOST programmes usable, but I lost all address books, history, passwords etc. BUT THE MACHINE IS LIKE NEW. IT FLIES!..sorry…just wanted to share.
I recently was getting tired of the CIS hogging my hard drive, making the machine almost unusable. So I tried to uninstall it to see how other suites behaved. They seemed to be much the same.
When trying to reinstall CIS I came up against some real trouble making the machine admit that CIS was gone. In the end I did a Repair install of XP and things got worse. In the end the PC would not even boot.
So I did the total install without formatting, with the result you see above.
If you can work out the easiest way to save and reimport all your history, cookies, passwords etc, then doing this every 6-12 months may well be the way to keep performance up to ■■■■■. I am not sure if later Windows had the same capability.