I’ve been building and repairing pc systems as a hobby for about seven years now. My worst nightmare (and this seems to be the majority of my work) is a windows pc full of spyware, and sometimes viruses, to the point where the pc is too crippled to even run anti-spyware/anti-virus software on it. I usually end up backing up important documents using a Linux Live-CD, then format and reinstall, but in a lot of cases, the customer has neglected to tell me about some of the stuff they needed to keep, or they assumed that it came with windows, and then later they’re surprised when something is missing, but by that time its too late to get it back. So how does your average technician deal with these things?
