Does EB corrupt over time?

[Tiberius Claudius Marcellus]

The other day I had asked for help re: sprite issues w/ spear/cavalry units. After reinstalling windows, RTW, EB 1.1 and 1.2 and the fixes (no sub-mods), as well as updating my video card drivers I booted up EB and was greeted by a fast and furious loading screen. All unit images were clean and crisp.

However, less than a week later the game takes longer and longer to load each time I play and I'm back to floating helmets/limbs in the middle of marching shields/ horse torsos. These negative effects appear to be cumulative, as starting a new campaign / erasing saved games does not solve the problem.

With this new install of windows et al., I've got no viri, malware, corrupt sectors, and I don't need to defragment. Does anyone else have performance issues that become worse over time? Do I just have a bad version of EB?