Let’s be honest. Back in the days of tape drives and floppy discs, file corruption was a real thing. The users only hope was to reinstall the software to correct hidden gems.
Today’s SSDs are far less susceptible to corruption than modern HDDs and modern HDDs are light years ahead of the 20MB grinders we used 40 years ago. The chance that a read-only file would become corrupt is so exceptionally small that even the space program works on a “reboot” not a “re-install” protocol.
Unless your computer was recently struck by a hypersonic micro meteoroid that by some miracle actually piped a hole in a platter, there are really only two possible states. The drive works, or it doesn’t. A HDD may corrupt data but, in most cases, only while in the throws of death.
There can be a load of garbage in your computer that can cause no end of mysterious effects. There are also some very simple tools available to “take the garbage out”, for users that do not have the computer savvy to do the clean up manually or don’t want to.
Basic computer maintenance/management dictates that we don’t randomly accept requests to download stuff on the internet and we don’t ask for more information about our long lost Saudi relative. If you don’t know what is on your computer, take it to someone that can clean it out.
Bottom line. Wiping and reinstalling is a sledgehammer that can quickly put the inexperienced user in a black hole of crashes and fails. In the process of doing a wipe you will lose all the chipset drivers as well as Windows and MSFS and GPU drivers. How many out there even know what chipset they have? How many know whether they should be using Realtek HD Audio drivers or Windows HD Audio drivers. Do they know that only one of those will allow sound through the HDMI cable, depending on the motherboard chipset.
Pretty sure I am going to get spammed for even mentioning it, but a lot of problems users are having are the result of bad or missing chipset drivers, poorly configured bios settings, invalid overclocks or conflicting settings. Sure there are bugs, too. Really hard to tell the difference sometimes. A reinstall is not going to correct any of those issues. Sure you can always use a restore point and roll your system back to the last clean install. Question is, when was that done? Does it have the same drivers? Were the chipset drivers done correctly when that install was done?
The right thing to do is to make sure that you know what drivers your computer needs and make sure they are installed and configured properly. If you don’t know, that’s OK. There are tech shops out there that can help. Be sure to check around and make sure you are taking it in to the right shop. The shop with the reputation for doing it right.
Let’s stop wiping and re-installing. Let’s stop un-installing and re-installing. Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it. The time spent on useless endeavors could be spent so much better by cleaning and confirming everything is right. Then you will be able to concentrate on settings. If your issue is persistent, document it and submit a ticket. It just might be a bug.
Just remember that if it is a bug, re-installing Windows probably isn’t going to fix it.
Disclaimer:
There is always an off chance that something malicious has corrupted a file somewhere. Usually only a safe mode scan will find it. Sometimes the only way to fix some Windows errors is to start over. If you must do that, make sure you have done your research and do it right.