Well, I'll stick to re-installing with a clean image when needed and stay away from anything that has to do with the registry at all (clean, defrag, compact, or whatever) permanently. I just made an image of my drive after having installed all of the software that I'll have on it with Symantec System Restore 2011and now have a virtual image that can be used any time I need a clean slate as it's fully patched and ready to go. I thank all of you for your input. It's been an eye opener to say the least.

Thankfully, I don't need to worry about leaving my laptop on for 5 years either. I'll just shutdown at the end of the day when I'm using it.