yeah it’s not hard to do- i actually did mess my system up too way back when I tried linux in the 90’s too- linux was a nightmare back then- not very easy to deal with- When i ran windows- I bought an invaluable program called RollbackRx- it was like system restore on steroids- After each reformat, I would do an immediate rollBackRx snapshot- then do a bunch of customizations to get things how i liked them- then do another snapshot- If anywhere along the line I hosed the system, And believe me, back in the early 2000’s I did a lot of experimenting with programs, software experimental drivers etc- and wrecked the system more than a few times- Also, if any virus was caught, I coudl simply reboot and go into the boot menu for Rollback and restore the computer- easy peasy-
When i switched to linux- I waS sorely missing rollbackRx- then found out about systemback- which isn’t quite as easy as rollback, but it’s not too hard- almost down to just a few clicks- snapshots are quick- just 2 clicks, system restore from disk though is harder- and there’s no boot menu option to restore
another option if you only have one system is to buy a second hard-drive- install windows (or linux whichever the case may be), all your programs, and settings, updates etc- and keep it ready to go just incase- also a good idea because drives fail often-
I actually have a disk duplicator- but wow does it take forever- over 16 hours to raw copy a hard-drive- it works well- but just really slow-
Cloning VirtualBox VMs is a swift way to to bypass software problems, but now my base system is Linux Mint and I don't have a quick way to fix it so I'll checkout your suggestions.