Yeah, let's not confuse apps here. Spinrite is simply a hard disk maintenance and recovery tool. If you have a dead hard drive and no backups, Spinrite will very likely recover the disk and your data.
Spinrite also excels as a maintenance tool. It will not cleanup your registry or prevent spyware or viruses, but it can identify surface defects on the disk itself and recover the data in the affected areas and rewrite them to a good sector.
If you have reinstalled Windows and the problem still exists, then Windows and the registry is not likely the issue. More likely a hard drive issue. Now, if you are re-imaging then it is possible the problem also exists in the backup image. But you did say re-install, not re-image.
Is this computer connected to the Internet? If so, try disconnecting all network connections when rebooting. If the problem goes away, then look for spyware. If this PC was connected to the Internet, you might also looking for a program called Rootkit Revealer. This can discover things hidden from Windows. Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus programs cannot detect rootkits. If anyone ever popped in a Sony Music CD then you might have a rootkit. But they can come from lots of sources, like fake anti-virus programs!!
OG