“I ended up reinstalling windows”
Well, there’s yer problem Laz. If ya had a Mac ya could just reset to factory default, put in a new password, and recovered yer files from iCloud. Eazy peazy.
(I’ve actually been there and scary as it was the Mac did make th process pretty straightforward.)
The Apple silicon has made that a little harder but still possible. I have a few Old Power Macs that I bought used 8 or 9 years ago, never turn them off and they still run fine. But I always have a duplicate of my start up drive on an external disk. I am down to about 5 computers now because at my age I really only need one computer and an iPad with a sim card for on the road or doctors office, don't even own a phone anymore, don't leave one unless wife takes me and she has one. You can make phone calls with the iPad anyway if you want to.
I remember my days with PCs hated them then don't want them now. Put in a hard drive and you have to get your machine's windows re-certified, same with adding ram, what a hassle. Of course with the new Apple stuff nothing is upgradable, external add ons only. Well unless you are a real techie, saw a guy upgrade ssd on motherboard of a Mini last week.