How to Reset this PC to Reinstall Windows
Hi everyone, Leo Notenboom here for AskLeo.com. It's interesting.
In years past, we've often talked about
periodically wanting to reinstall to Windows.
That was usually because over time, Windows would, I'll just say, destabilize.
It's not nearly as common to want to do that again these
days, but there are still scenarios where you do.
The difference, of course, is that in the past you had to have, like,
a Windows setup disk or some kind of installation media.
However, these days Windows actually
includes a copy of itself, if you will, that allows you to do exactly this
with nothing else required in most circumstances.
So let's review exactly when you might
want to reset and what the conditions are for this reset to actually work.
As I said, it used to be every so often was a good idea.
Depending on how you use your machine, it could be as frequent as once a year,
it could be as frequent as every couple of years, whatever.
Or just when you noticed a problem,
that's no longer the case.
But absolutely stuff still happens.
So my recommendation for when to evaluate using a reset your PC
is when things just seem unstable and you really do suspect the operating system.
You really do suspect that for whatever
reason, the operating system itself isn't what it should be.
And I don't mean that in terms of their design choices.
I mean literally in terms of stability.
Something has been, I don't want to say corrupted, but just isn't working right.
Reset this PC is one of the things you can try.
Now, I will say that it is a pretty big deal.
It's not something you're going to want to do lightly.
There are some Ramifications I'll talk about in a moment,
but it can help in a lot of circumstances and can often reset your PC to a great
known state that then will allow you to continue to evaluate whether or not
whatever problems you are having have gone away, or whether or not those problems
still remain that will tell you that they are or are not part of Windows.
Now, I do have to point out that this won't fix certain things.
In fact, it's not available under certain conditions.
For example, this assumes your PC is mostly working.
In other words, in order for reset this PC
to be available, you have to be able to boot into the existing copy of Windows.
If you're dealing with a hard disk
failure, or you are dealing with something else that is adversely impacting your
ability to boot into Windows and run Windows itself.
Or you just can't get to this option
because of a problem with Windows, it's not going to help.
You're going to have to use something
else, usually installation media that will allow you to do something similar.
We're not going to talk about that today.
We're going to focus on the built in reset this PC option.
So I do want to point out that there is
a step, one that everybody overlooks that if you know me at all, you know what?
This step is going to be back up.
Like I said, reset this PC is pretty major.
It has some side effects,
and it's possible, for example, that it might not work.
In that case, you want a complete backup
image that you can restore to in order to basically return to this point in time
before you've started, so that nothing can get worse than where you are now.
Even if the install fails,
even if the reset fails, even if you suddenly realize that it's not
what you want, you can always go back to the backup image.
So please take the time to create a full
system backup image right now before you start.
So let's switch over to Windows Eleven and run through the process.
I'm going to fire up the Settings app,
and this is honestly the only difference between Windows Ten and Windows Eleven.
In Windows Eleven, you'll see that recovery is right here in the system.
The default PUDO tab in the Settings app.
In Windows Ten, you'll find this under
Windows Update, there's a recovery item on the left hand side that will still all
get you to something that looks very much like this.
So we're going to reset this PC.
That's what this video is all about.
We'll click on reset this PC, keeping your Files versus removing
Everything this is the first decision you have to make.
Now, I want to be clear.
This is only about your data files.
Your installed programs, your apps and all their settings are going to be reset.
If you have third party apps that you've
installed prior to this, you're going to need to reinstall those.
The only thing that's going to come back
from a reset this PC is Windows itself and your data files.
This is part that makes me a little bit uncomfortable.
I'm going to run through and say, keep your personal files just because
the issue is what does it consider to be your personal files?
My belief is what it's going to save is everything that's in your sign in folder,
your usersloginame folder that would include things like documents, my videos,
those kinds of folders that are Windows default folders.
If you have data files outside of that, if you've got your own directory structure
under the root of the drive or something like that, those may not be preserved.
They might be, but I'm not going to guarantee it.
This is another reason why I believe it's so critical for you to take a full image
backup of the system before you embark on this process.
So that no matter what happens,
you've got copies of everything that was on the hard drive.
Because a lot of it is going to get erased
and you want to be able to restore anything that wasn't preserved or anything
that you need to restore for whatever reason after the process is over.
So as I said, I'm going to click on click, keep my files.
Getting things Ready The next decision you
have to make is whether or not to do a cloud download or a local reinstall.
What this means is do you want
the reinstallation process to get the copy of Windows that's going to be reinstalled
from the hidden partition on your hard disk?
Or do you want it to just download it right now from Microsoft?
Granted, the download can be very large.
You can see it here.
Cloud download can use more than 4GB of data.
There are two cases where you absolutely want to avoid that.
One is if you've got a slow ish internet connection that can take a while
to download, and the other of course is if you're on a metered connection.
If you're on a metered connection, that's going to count against your data cap.
In those cases, you're probably going
to want to focus on getting the image from the hard disk and not from the cloud.
On the other hand, getting it as a cloud download means you're guaranteed to get
the correct copy of Windows for your reinstallation.
I'm going to go ahead and say local
reinstall so that we don't spend a lot of time here doing this.
Change settings, don't need to change any settings.
We've made the right choice.
We're simply confirming that we want to reinstall Windows from this device.
I'll click on next.
Getting things ready Again now this is an important message to pay attention to.
It is telling you exactly what it's going to do.
We're going to change settings back to the default,
we're going to keep personal files, we're going to reinstall Windows,
and we're going to remove all apps and programs.
My recommendation is that you do indeed view the apps that will be removed.
You might be surprised.
In this case, it's going to remove Chrome
and Edge and OneDrive and a few other things that are quite surprising.
Now when you get back to your clean version of Windows,
you're going to have the option to automatically reinstall those things.
And in fact, some of them I'd be shocked
if Edge weren't automatically reinstalled for you.
Same with OneDrive.
But the bottom line is that depending on what you have installed on your
machine, you may find that there are applications here that are going to be
removed that you didn't realize would be removed.
Review the entire list, scroll through it.
If it's longer than a screen, make sure you understand exactly what's happening.
If you want to cancel the reset, then of course you'd hit the cancel button.
We're going to hit back and go ahead,
and then the next step would be to click on Reset.
Now I'm not going to do that on this
machine because I don't want to reset this PC.
I'm quite happy with the way that it's running.
But the bottom line here is that now once
I hit reset, Windows is going to go into its reset mode.
It's going to reboot several times and then at some point during the process
you will end up coming back to a login screen because Windows will be back
at that point where it wants to log you in again.
It's been reset.
It's not done.
What's going to happen next is you'll end
up with the original out of box experience.
Basically, it will tell you that this might still take several minutes.
You'll be asked to reconfirm your Privacy
settings, a few other things associated with first time window set up because
in a way, that's kind of what's happening here.
You're kind of installing Windows from scratch, but you're not right?
You're preserving some things and you're
doing it with a copy of Windows you already have.
After you've signed in and everything is
happy, everything is done with the reset portion.
I strongly suggest that the next thing you
do is go back to the Settings app and click on Windows Update and let it
check again for any updates that you might still need.
Remember when you choose, especially when you choose to update
from the copy of Windows that's on your PC, that might be an out of date copy.
There might be things that need to get installed.
This is the opportunity to do that.
You've got a clean copy of Windows now
let's make it up to date before you install anything else.
And finally, after you've got it all up to date after you've got all the pieces
in place, then my recommendation is back it up again.
And I say that because backing it up again
is your opportunity to save a copy of Windows in this clean
reset state that you can use instead of resetting this PC.
In fact, there's a very strong argument that says after you've installed all
of the applications you care about, you back it up yet again and save that.
That will save you from having to reinstall all your applications again
should you ever need to revert to a clean copy of Windows.
That's the bottom line here though is
that by resetting Windows, you are getting yourself back to a clean
copy of Windows that you can then bring up to date and reinstall your applications.
And hopefully, hopefully you'll have
addressed whatever issue it is that caused you to go through this process.
If that issue still remains,
then you know that it is either not an issue with Windows itself or it's
an issue that is inherent in the current version of Windows.
Hope that helps.
Hope that helped walk you through the process.
Process.
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I'm Leo Notenboom and this is AskLeo.com. Thanks for watching.