Sooner or later your Mac will crash. Many things can cause a crash. When your Mac crashes, files can become damaged in your System Folder or your hard drive's directory structure can become damaged. If you are experiencing frequent crashes or unexplained problems and have tried all the common diagnostic procedures like running Disk First Aid to check your hard drive, rebuilding your desktop, resetting your PRAM, and checking for an extension conflict, you may be a candidate for a clean install. A clean install can also save you the time of troubleshooting an extension conflict.
Extension conflicts are common and can be time consuming to diagnose.
A clean install disables your existing System Folder, leaving all files in place, and creates a totally new System Folder on your hard drive. After performing a clean install, you will need to migrate files like control panels, extensions, and preference, from your previous System Folder over to the new System Folder. There are a few utilities you can use to ease this process. One is Clean Install Assistant. Another utility we really like and highly recommend you try is Conflict Catcher.