Yeah, and editing the Windows registry is easy!

Your comment is highly specious and too commonly spouted by the pro Windows crowd. The fact is that if anything ever really goes wrong with Windows, you're often up the creek. At least for average users.
With Linux (and UNIX in general), you can browse through the relevant text based config files and often figure out how to fix the problem yourself.

Windows on the other hand is much more of a black box. The parts you can access are often cryptic and hard to locate. The usual Windows repair options are:
- Reboot and hope it goes away
- Uninstall the app and re-install it and hope the problem goes away.
- Re-install Windows and all your apps.
- Pay someone else to do one of the above.

Most Linux problem fixes are a Google search or forum post away.