A month and a half. That's how long it took for something (in this particular case, an installation of software that will not be named, by a vendor whose products have been growing increasingly invasive and bossy) to break my Windows beyond the point of repair. So yay, I wasted an afternoon first trying to fix the installation, and then making a clean re-install of the system.
Again, yay.
The Director is listening:
Stormwarrior - Iron Prayers