Lucifer Morningstar wrote in
:

There are many programs that can be used to clean up an exsiting
instillation of Windows, such as ccleaner, startup control, virus
scanners.

The problem of course is that this will never be as good as a clean
install.

For example, I noticed that the previous owner seems to have a million
popups that are running in the background.

Who can keep track of all that, when I would turn off EVERYTHING that
phones home.

There will never (almost never) be anything that I will set to phone home.

As just one example, a web browser has a half dozen settings or more
settings for phoning home where I turn all of them off. I noticed that
there are a huge number of blue "sliders" in Microsoft Windows 10 Pro that
I already had to turn off.

But there are so (so) many that I am positive that I will need to do a
clean install, just so that I can say no to every single prompt that even
suggests that it can phone home to anywhere.

I will *never* want or need a program to check a server for anything.

Note that I maintain my own manual calendar and I can check my email when I
want to check my email, and I can't imagine why I'd want ANY program to
connect to the Internet when I'm not looking.

I'm sure they all try (which is why when I install programs I disconnect
the Internet temporarily), and I'm sure some get away with it behind my
back, but if there is a choice, I will tell every program to not phone home
under any circumstance.

The NSA vacuums all that stuff up too, so why give them more than they
already have, for absolutely no possible gain to me?

Oooops. I just realized I went on a rant!
/RANT

I don't think a "cleanup" program can really clean up the hundreds of
settings that I do differently than other people. My default will be for
nothing to run that spies on me. Nothing to run that phones home. Nothing
to run that reminds me of anything. Nothing to run that requires a login
(except email and banking).

So since my defaults are almost certainly different than the average
person, I don't think any cleanup program will do the job I need.

Only a clean install will work for me I think.