I always prefer a reboot if there are no joint problems yet. There have been many stories on here about difficulty in removing one of the ends of an axle, leading to a lot of work, or worse. If you reboot, you only need to remove one of the two ends, which improves your odds of avoiding a disaster. So I know it is commonly said that it is just easier to replace the whole axle vs. getting grease on your hands and replacing a boot, but not always true.

BTW, for full disclosure on how I may be biased ... a story from back in the day ... I was on a windsurf safari in my aircooled VW Vanagon, about 1000 miles from home, when I started getting some CV clicking while driving straight that would not go away. I rebooted the bad joint but the sound was still there since the bearing surface was damaged, as I had seen when it was apart. Solution (not uncommon with VWs back in those days) was to swap the axles left to right so a different part of the CV bearing surfaces was now being used. Problem fixed until I was home and could fix it at my convenience with new joints.

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2001 X5 3.0i, 203k miles, AT, owned since 2014