I like your graphic though.
That seems to be the situation when the IT guys show up to "fix" my computer. It's happened a couple of times (once sort'a my fault by clicking on some random registry file by accident that totally snarfed the real registry files). In those cases (I now know better than to call IT), recovery was possible just that in one case it took ~1 day (much less than the cost of lost files) and in the other was done much quicker with the help of Knoppix and a (direct, hex) disk editor.
Its my fault for responding to GE, the Baghdad bob of tech threads...