I wasnt a professional, Just the “computer guy”… and its been like 25+ years, but if I recall correctly they didnt hire me to reformat it specifically, I believe it was windows 98, and memory serves it hadnt been reformatted in years, and i think they slapped some new PCI cards into it without removing the software for the old ones? I dont remember the details, but basically told them that a clean start would have a 98% chance of fixing their system, and if it didnt… I’d still need the clean start to figure out what was wrong where.

They were over my shoulder the entire time, wouldnt have let me if i wanted to (Edit, and I wouldnt have wanted to, because I hate going through peoples stuff even with permission)… and quite frankly I just wanted to get out of there asap cause I didnt like the attitude i got for being there trying to help them.

I did run into them again at a later time, where they were sad to have lost their stuff, but said the computer was running faster than ever, not realizing how much the bullshit had been dragging them down.