The issue is that a reinstall of the OS is pretty quick, but getting all the other applications downloaded, installed, activated, and having settings configured

The issue is that a reinstall of the OS is pretty quick, but getting all the other applications downloaded, installed, activated, and having settings configured takes an incredibly long time. The other issue is that if you try to dive in deep and fix the problem by trying out various things and running diagnostics etc, you may in the end still need to reinstall.