I have to say, as someone who has been using Windows machines since 94, I have honestly never had any real problems. From my experience, it's usually the act of putting 10,000 programs on the system, with 500 background tasks running in the background that fucks things up. This has been the case in every computer I've ever encountered (e.g., friends, family) with problems. My one friend has a system I built him and he's done everything I've told him not to in order to keep in running smooth. When I get on his computer, I can't help it see such a mess of shit, that the programs folder expands off the screen, the desktop is loaded with icons, and even his favorites takes a month to locate specific URLs. His task bar has at least 15 icons in it too. The amazing part? He only really uses about 5 programs, the rest is stuff he just felt he wanted to try at one time. Ridiculous. He told me last week while camping "My computer is really doggin' out and I think it's getting ready to die". No shit, you have tortured the goddamn thing!
I have 15 actual applications (Adobe Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, Google Earth, Kaspersky AV, Keepass, Nero, O&O Defrag, PGP, WinZip, Window Washer, and a few really tiny tool programs like Unit Convertors). The rest is just Microsoft Flight Sim 2004 and it's respective add ons I've bought for it. I clean and defrag my drive weekly and don't leave anything on I don't use or like.
I'm not saying this is your case, but most of the time that's the problem. Otherwise bad hardware or bad drivers. I build my machines, am picky, and have had great success because of it.
