Set up Windows 10 Again with the Out of Box Experience: OOBE
Hi everyone Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com. If at the end of this video you find it
useful and there's a “Like” button down somewhere below? Hit it. It helps me of
course but it also helps other people find the information they're looking for as they search.
So it's not that uncommon for people to want to, kind of sort of, reset up Windows
10 without necessarily going through the entire process of resetting up Windows 10.
The program that runs when you set it up is referred to as the “Out Of Box Experience”,
and as it turns out you can run it again later. Before we start though I want to talk about
backing up. It is important that you take a backup of your system before we start this process.
And I say that because while we kind of sort of have a good idea of what this process does,
it won't uninstall some software based on my experience, and it will reset a bunch of settings.
I don't know if there isn't something in between that you really really really care about. With
an image backup you'll be able to go back to the state your machine was in before we did
anything here. So please start with a backup unless this machine of yours is, you know, you
don't really don't care what happens to it. The Out Of Box Experience starts with a tool called
SysPrep. Let's switch over to Windows 10 home. So what we're looking at here is my Windows 10
home machine. It's a full installation of Windows 10. It happens to be fairly fresh since I’ve been
playing with this particular example a bit. What we're going to do is run a program called SysPrep
we'll right click on the start button, click on run. And then enter
%WINDIR%\system32\sysprep\sysprep.exe. You can locate it any way you like. You can use Windows
File Explorer to go to it. Whatever works for you. I’ll make sure that this information is in
the notes accompanying this video, as well as the original article that will accompany it as well.
And we'll hit okay. So now what we have here is the System Preparation Tool . There is actually
nothing we need to do here. What we are going to do is simply say ok. But you've chosen the OOBE
that I’ve talked about, not the generalize option. And we're going to reboot. And that
turns out to be important to get this process started. I’m going to go ahead
and click ok and the machine now, after it does a little bit of processing, will reboot.
This should all now start to look very familiar because this is pretty much the same scenario that
runs when you set up caps Windows 10 the very first time. It is the Out Of Box Experience.
Now this is one of those settings that it didn't reset. I had multiple language packs installed on
this machine so I get to choose which one I’m going to run set up in. I will choose English.
It's our friend Cortana. “Hi Hi there there
I’m Cortana”. As you can see she's a little stuttery on this particular machine.
Clicking that microphone down there at the bottom turned the audio off. Although we do
still have to sit through her little sales pitch about how helpful she's going to be.
We are starting in the united states of course,
I have a us keyboard. I do not want to add a second layout. Naturally we have to accept
the Terms of Service here. Now of course one of the first things we need to do before we
proceed in the setup process is set up one of our accounts. Microsoft strongly encourages you to use
a Microsoft account and that's what I’m going to show you here. I strongly encourage it as well.
It does give you the most flexibility in terms of account recovery account access and more.
And it really is the way I think most machines should now be set up. There are some obscure
ways to set up a local machine account that I’m not going to cover here in this video, but it
is an option. If you are particularly concerned about say Microsoft’s access to your activities
and privacy. The account that I’m going to use is my Hotmail account askleoexample@hotmail.com.
And unfortunately I’m not able to copy paste my password in a scenario like this
so I’ll type it in painfully, character by character.
Now as it turns out this account has two-factor authentication turned on so what that means is
that it's going to need two-factor authentication to confirm that I should be allowed to set up a
machine with this account. I have to enter in the last four digits of that phone number
to confirm, to begin with, that I know what the phone number is.
And now it's going to send me a code and there it is. So I will type in that code,
and I will now have this account, my Hotmail account, be the login account for this machine.
I’m a believer in pins. I think that they are a secure and easy way of signing into your machine,
so I am going to go ahead and use a pin on this machine.
Now we get to the privacy settings for this machine.
The single most important thing you need to do, when it comes to your privacy, is not blindly
hit accept. What I want to do is talk through some of these items for you a little bit and see
which ones you might consider to be important, and which ones aren't. For example location
do you want it to know where you are? It does add features and functionality to some of the
applications that come with Windows. On the other hand sometimes that location isn't necessary.
Diagnostic data. So it's sending information about the websites you browse and how you use
apps and features. This one some people might find intrusive. It's sending information about where
you browse and how you use apps. They claim it is done in a not personally identifiable way. If you
agree with them, if you believe them, then it may be fine to leave this turned on. On the other hand
if this is of concern to you, then this would be one to potentially turn off. Required diagnostic
data is of course required that's part of Windows 10. Tailored experiences. So can they use the
information that they've collected to offer tips and ads and recommendations. Well again, that's
kind of up to you. It depends, once again, on how much you trust them. It is not something that will
affect your ability to use the system so I suggest potentially turning that off. Find my device.
This is also a very highly leveraged item when it comes to portable devices. This allows windows to
tell you where you left your device. I recommend leaving this one on as long as you've got location
turned on. Inking and typing. This allows them to improve their ability to recognize text when
you type it in or when you are writing it in if you've got that kind of an input device.
This is another one where you may or may not want Microsoft to see what it is you've been typing,
or what it is you've been writing. I recommend leaving it on just because I tend to trust them.
But if you don't it's certainly safe to turn off. Advertising ID. Ultimately that's just
a unique number associated with this specific machine that is then shared with advertisers,
so that they can provide you with ads that are more relevant to what it is you
do and look at. If this is something that bothers you. If this is something that concerns you,
again, it's also very safe to turn off. Like I said the most important thing is that you
understand what you're agreeing to when you get to this screen. Now that we've
set things to be a mix of yes’s and no's I’m going to go ahead and accept the settings.
So now with the Out Of Box Experience we've actually got a few more things that
I don't know. They kind of tailor the device to your needs. I also see them as, as much
advertising from Microsoft’s part as anything else. Customize your device. There's nothing here
that you can't set up later and that actually is a theme for much of what's going on here.
Use your phone from your pc. Skip for now. You can set that up later.
Back up your files with OneDrive. While I recommend you use OneDrive for this functionality
it is something you can set up in OneDrive later. So for now only save files to this PC.
Microsoft office. If you have Office and you have a product key by all means feel free to
enter it now. On the other hand unless you want a free trial for a month say “no thanks”. Office
will still be there but you'll be directed to the online free versions of the applications.
And finally, nope, I’m not a fan of Cortana, so we're going to say “not now”.
And that's pretty much it. The setup process is going to complete for us
and when it's done it's going to return to a brand new clean desktop with the original
start menu a bunch of other settings reset. And we're just ready to go and use Windows 10.
And there we are back at our new Windows 10 desktop. I hope that was helpful. I
hope running the Out Of Box Experience helps you solve some of the problems you
may have experienced with caps Windows 10. As always, for the article on which this video was
based, for related links, for updates and comments and more visit askleo.com/131022.
I’m Leo Notenboom. This is askleo.com. Thanks for watching.