Should I do a fresh install of Win 11?

[Easto]

Up until about 5 of months ago everything was running great. Actually, everything still runs pretty darn good! But lately as I've added a few new USB devices and Programs and I've noticed things running a bit slower. Probably not slower where someone else would notice, things just don't seems as "snappy" as they did. On top of that it seems like my Internet experience has slowed down. They speeds all report as being fine, it's just that web pages don't seem as snappy. Maybe I need to change my DNS service(?). For the record I do Clear my DNS Cache about twice a year. Anyway, for the last several months I've been considering a fresh Windows install. Is this still really a worthwhile thing these days? I remember in the days of HDDs it seemed like a reformat and reinstall was a frequently suggested procedure. One reason I haven't jumped right into a fresh install is that now I have a handful of software that requires specific licensing that is tied to this computer and I'll have to deactivate them on this machine and transfer the licensing to the new machine etc. It's going to add more time to the reinstall and I'm just don't think my problems are necessarily bad enough to actually have to do a reinstall.

[Philip]

It depends how elaborate your current setup/customizations are. If you have many programs installed, I wouldn't bother, since the benefit of reinstalling Windows would be small. There are less drastic steps to cleanup temp folders, browsers caches, even registry with tools like CCleaner, that program can do a lot of the work without reinstalling. I haven't reinstalled my Windows 10 in 5+ years, I just keep it updated and clean up at times.

As to the DNS service... Depends on the ISP, but I've had bad experiences with a few cable providers, it has been better for me to use Google or Cloudflare (or both) DNS resolvers.