I've been situations where a user had unusual software installed that was a pain to set up again, requiring battles with special licensing applications or coordination with another office for a fresh copy of a remote database. In a case like that, we might spend a couple of hours resolving a problem on the user's computer, and it would still be better than re-imaging and subsequently having to deal with reinstalling that particular software package! Hey, I didn't say these were great applications, but specialty apps aimed at specific industries are sometimes uncooperative and cumbersome. You have to determine where the line is in those cases.