Clean or reinstall

[WigglingWaffles]

Recently I've had some problem with a specific virus that (no idea how) got through malwarebytes and put a chip in my shoulder dealing with it and its damage.

So I decided to give up on trying to get rid of it by doing a reinstall of windows.
Do I do a clean (remove personal files and games/programs) or a reinstall? (uninstalls just my games/programs)

Most of the things on my computer are programs, but I feel like a clean install would fix it for SURE
tl;dr
do i clean install or just plain reinstall to rid myself of this virus?

[LogicalDrm]

So you mean clean install or restore? Restore is the one which will bring Windows back to previous time, most likely before some update sequence. This doesn't have effect on your files and most installed software. Some most recent ones maybe be gone. Restore usually fixed problems with Windows itself.

I haven't heard of reinstall where it just uninstalls all software and removes your files. That sounds bit like refresh which is what laptops use. There you don't actually reinstall windows but restore laptop to factory settings.

I would still recommend using clean install. You can still select to save your personal files (under Users directory) and software files though not be able to use softwares. Those files will be stored in folder called Windows.old. You get message during install asking about this if you don't format drive prior to install. It says something like "Windows Installer has found previous version of Windows. Do you want to save data from that install?" etc.

I also will highly recommend backupping all your important files to secondary drive.