This has got to be a failure of early Windows versions -- I've had systems online for 5+ years without needing to be restarted, updating and restarting the software running on them without service interruption. RAID storage makes hotswapping failing drives easy, which is the most common part needing periodic replacement.

Yes. With Windows 3.x there wasn’t a lot to go wrong that couldn’t be fixed in a single ini file. Windows 95 through ME was a complete shitshow where many many things could go wrong and the fastest path to fixing it was a fresh install.

Windows XP largely made that irrelevant, and Windows 7 made it almost completely irrelevant.