Upgrade lead to a slowdown

Hey Everyone,

I'm back again to enhance my knowledge and ask the experts - you!

A month ago i upgraded one of my pc's cpu from a dual core 2.8 to a intel i3 3220 (i figured id get about 20% more power) which went fine and when i initially loaded it up i needed to reinstall some drivers (graphics card + sound).

After about a week though it seems to be slower at starting up and loading certain programs. And crashes more!

Also this week the my computer tab on the desktop disappeared and my cd's do not autoload anymore - Have you got any suggestions what might be causing this or how to fix it.

I don't really want to wipe the pc but as a last resort that is what i will do

It's hard to say without knowing anything about your system, other than the CPU is a i3-3220.

Well without going into loads of detail,

Basically its OS is windows 7, The mobo GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S2PV, 4 GB ram, 500 W PSU and the most terrible graphics card a EVGA GT 520 1GB.

Do you think a clean re-install would be the best option??

Yes, by far.