I rebuild systems fairly often and it takes me at least 6 hours to get a
system back up with just the necessary apps - windows, office and a few
others I must have, then weeks more to get everything else reinstalled.
Plus, most people forget to backup a lot of files, like custom.dic and
templates - or it takes hours to backup music, photos and videos before they
can even think about reformatting.

If the problem just started and they have several days of system restore
points, a SR is worth trying.

--
Diane Poremsky [MVP - Outlook]
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"Alias" wrote in message
...
Diane Poremsky {MVP} wrote:
Reinstalling windows is a bit overkill at this point.


The time he's already spent on the problem is more than it would take to
reinstall Windows.

Alias