I am having an issue where the user profile sync service is stuck starting. I have Read harbars guide to fixing this, located here: http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups2.aspx#ups14
My question is if I recreate the User Profile Service Application do I need to delete the first one first? The reason I ask is because I'm afraid of losing the SharePoint Mysites data. All the permissions are set correctly according to harbar's article and it still isn't working, so I tried recreating the User Profile Service application - to no avail.
Also I read here that http://mmman.itgroove.net/2013/09/16/debugging-steps-in-sharepoint-2013-ups-creation/ this may help, specifically step 8. It says clear the configuration cache, is this likely to resolve the issue of the user profile sync service not starting.