Hmm, delete some files or shove a probe up my arse...
I think I would have to go with reinstalling Windows and restoring stuff from backup. It might be a pain in the arse, but at least it's not a camera in the arse.
A third of Americans see nothing wrong with being connected to the web while on honeymoon, but would balk at hooking up during a wedding, a security firm has claimed. The survey, sponsored by PCTools, also found that more than one in 10 Americans would rather get a colonoscopy that spend time cleaning up their computer. The …
...can't be arsed to clean the registry?
The most suprising thing here is that would imply that 25% of 'em know what the registry is........
I suspect that the correct conclusion for this feedback is: "People given a question which they haven't got a fucking clue what it means are considerably more likely to answer 'No' than 'Yes'."
"three quarters of adults would do almost anything else to avoid spending time cleaning up their system's registry"
Don't you mean four quarters of adults? Seriously, who likes cleaning the Registry? It's like playing Operation, only instead of a buzzer going off when you touch the wrong bit, your computer deletes all of your files and refuses to turn on ever again. Not to mention you have to get balls-deep in a hierarchy of cryptic folder names longer than a garden hose before you can even find the bit that you have to change to break your computer in the first place. Pain in the ass.
They exist for a reason. It's reassuring to go to dentists or doctors and have an exam and get the all fine, even if you do have something at least it isn't going untreated. If they asked whether you'd rather have your spouse jam something up there for kicks then I bet the percentage would be lower... although...
clean viruses and crap off my computer OR do the registry. And I don't run Windows so I don't have to.
If I did have an Ubuntu install go to hell somehow, I can either tell Synaptic to reinstall all installed packages, or even back up the package list, do a reinstall from a LiveCD (so I know I have uncompromised packages) then tell it to reinstall the package list I saved. The use of packages really makes a full reinstall painless if worst comes to worst, compared to the usual way in Windows of reinstalling then having to reinstall all these apps one by one (I know that CAN be automated, either by setting up .MSIs for all the apps or ghosting, but most people do not do that.)
I've always found this an odd contradicition, people who do not want to run anything but Windows, think Windows is great while SIMULTANEOUSLY complaining about how bad the maintenance is and how they either hate working on it, or hate paying someone else to do it.