Mostly I am working on Windows XP Home systems and 9 times out of 10 reinstalling Windows will wipe the previous installation and with it all the personal data (referred to as a “Clean Install” as opposed to an “Install in Place”).
In the last two weeks I have done this three times. There was minimal data loss in each case as I was able to slave and retrieve their my docs/photos/psts. In the same period I have cleaned 5 systems of major virus/malware problems with no data loss.
If I could simply reinstall Windows with no data loss, I wouldn’t ever use Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, Stinger, or have learned how to strip viruses out of the registry by hand.
I would just reinstall Windows everytime a hiccup happened.
But I don’t live in that reality.
When you get to repair one of the newer viruses that trashes the registry, you may reconsider. Unless the user has done a system state backup, I’m not sure how you “fix” a registry in which an unknown number of items have been modified or deleted.