Ah but if when you reinstall again, get it upto date with current service packs, and security patches. THEN image C:Drive and store that image on a seperate partition on the same Hard Drive or on another drive.
And assumming you store your own data on another partition, then any time ME starts "falling to pieces??" again. It can be put back to "as new" state by replacing the iffy C:Drive with the saved image, it takes less than 5 mins to reimage my C:Drive.
DO it once and do it right, and forget pulling your hair out at the prospect of hours of reformats, reinstalls and downloading up dates, setting it up just how you like it.
Plus besides having a clean "virgin" image, you can also have an image you up date say every month if you want.
You know it makes sense