Troubleshooting 101

I was having some random issues with the computer as of late. Applications quitting on me... not being able to burn disks all the time... just some weird issues. I had run the disk utility and there were no errors. Now for my version of troubleshooting. Rather then go through the normal range of troubleshooting steps I decided to skip to the end and just do an erase and install. All my data is kept on an external drive and it was easy enough to back up the settings for applications. Plus I had to back up my mail. Did a custom install and in the time it took me to write the last post it was done. 20 minutes, instead of the usual 45. Of course I chose not to install most of the applications which helps. And now it's time to reinstall the applications I want.