Time for a F9 restore on my EeePC?

Quite a number of annoying little things happening on my EeePC now that are perhaps indicative of the need for a F9 restore.
Here's a list of them:
1. Must start from Easy Mode and then go into Full Desktop (FD) to prevent sound server problem on booting into FD (however, it seems like today that problem doesn't occur any more)
2. Similarly, need to start in Easy Mode and then FD to get the symbolically-linked Autostart of VoiceCommand to launch on boot.
3. Couldn't install two updates (Asus Update System Update and Ralink_WLAN Patch). More details in this forum post.
4. Now get a segfault on booting into FD which seems to prevent the Desktop background from appearing.

Of particular concern is that no really helpful replies were received t my forum posts on the first three of these problems. This generally means that the problem is not widespread and very possibly is peculiar to myself.

Other than that, however, everything works fine but it has become worrying.