That's actually amazing. First I shudder to think of all the cruft in that install. Leftover registry settings from 2015 on. But second kudos for being able to do that. I've tried and failed about 5 times in my life at moving a windows install to another computer since Windows 95 days. I didn't think it was at all possible.

It was more-or-less true with Windows 3.1 (and likely earlier). Some people could correct some problems by modifying the various configuration files, but most didn't. One of the ironies is that I, as a rabid OS/2 user, managed to get a job managing Windows 3.1 systems since I was one of the few candidates who understood how to do so.

When Windows 95 entered the picture, such wipe-and-reinstall antics were pretty much standard for all but trivial problems. Even then people would usually live with those problems, though a handful of people would be able to go in and fix them. Of course, Microsoft has introduced some functionality over the years to mitigate such drastic measures, but they tend to be variations of the same theme (e.g. restore points rolling back changes, rather than going in to fix what is broken).