Clean house

Howdy ! I am thinking of wiping my hard drive but dont want to lose all of my programs. I am not sure how to back up the items I want to save so I dont have to purchase new keys for those programs. I am getting a lot of freeze ups and errors even though I try to keep it clean. Can anyone tell me how or if this can be done ? I have a very old desktop with XP.

 

You cannot back up programs. Only data (music, pictures, videos, documents, etc).
There are some exceptions, however, in most cases, you will be bringing any existing problems over to the a new hard drive too.
What keys are you trying to save? Office 20XX keys? Have you tried the following to retrieve your keys?

http://majorgeeks.com/Magical_Jelly_Bean_Keyfinder_d2612.html
http://majorgeeks.com/Keyfinder_Thing_Lite_d5253.html

Are you sure the problem is with your hard drive? You will have to get more descriptive on what exactly is happening.
When does the PC freeze?

• It freezes randomly (sometimes I can be on the computer for hours and the PC will not freeze)
  • It freezes when I try to run ____ program
  • It freezes before I even get to the desktop
  • It freezes when I try to ______
• What do the errors you receive say?