Windows 10 new Reset feature ?

Ztruker said:

Still exposed to the same hard drive failure problem. Is there a way to create recovery media so if a hard drive fails you can replace it and restore to factory state?

Edit: Never mind, I found Create a recovery drive under Settings.

You could also create a custom reset image where you like that would be used instead when you reset Windows. :)

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4...dows-10-a.html

I'm lost! What's the big deal about a Factory Reset?
To get back to a Factory install, you're loosing every program you ever installed on your PC,
then you're loosing all of the data files you've collected since the PC was originally installed.
Plus, you get back all of the CRAP software that was installed at the factory.

I'd prefer a root canal to a Factory Reset!!!

My own alternative, is to take the new PC, tweak it and tune it for maximum efficiency, then DE-Install all the Crapware that came with the factory install, then install all my own favorite programs that I use daily, re-install all my data files and finally when it's exactly the way I want it, I do a Ghost Backup of the C: drive to either a secondary hard drive or an external USB hard drive. (your Backup/Restore program MUST NOT be on your C: drive, in case that drive crashes)

Then if anything goes haywire, I can boot up with my Ghost boot disk (CD, or flash drive), run a Ghost Restore and I'm right back to where I was when I did the last Ghost backup.

To try to stay up to date, I make a new Ghost Backup once a week and a full Data Backup to an external FD or HD whenever I add new files to my data folders. (that could be Daily, using a DOS Batch File, with XCOPY)

Just last week, I had to do a Ghost Restore, to get rid of some nasties that were messing up Windows.
All I lost in the process was a few emails that I had not saved. No big deal.

So can we please, do away with this Factory Reset garbage?

It will save a lot of users who are nowhere near as tech savvy as most of the regular users here and on the sister forums and have never heard of Macrium or Ghost.

alphanumeric said:

I don't think that does what you think it does. In windows 8.1 its a small image with limited functions. http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html. Let me know what it does in Windows 10.

Yup, just a small caveat :)

A recovery USB flash drive cannot be used to install Windows 8 unless this is an OEM PC that came with Windows 8 preinstalled, and you checked the Copy contents from the recovery partition to the recovery drive box at step 5 below.

So, back to my original statement then, what happens when your hard drive dies and you don't have an image backup (I do and always will but many/most people don't).

Shawn, if the hard drive dies, you lose the custom image unless you were smart enough to save it to another drive or flash drive. What am I missing here?

Yes, I know about imaging and I Acronis for this, I'm talking about the majority of normal, non techy users.

Where does Reconstruct.wim come from on the Recovery drive? Is it built on the fly by the Create recovery drive process? Any way to get the Create recovery drive process to use the custom recimage?

Ztruker said:

So, back to my original statement then, what happens when your hard drive dies and you don't have an image backup (I do and always will but many/most people don't).

You would lose everything, and end up having to do a clean install on a new hard drive.

Ztruker said:

Shawn, if the hard drive dies, you lose the custom image unless you were smart enough to save it to another drive or flash drive. What am I missing here?

Yes, I know about imaging and I Acronis for this, I'm talking about the majority of normal, non techy users.

If the hard drive you saved the custom reset image on dies, then you would lose it.

It would be very smart to save the custom reset image on a separate hard drive than the one Windows is installed on.

Ztruker said:

Where does Reconstruct.wim come from on the Recovery drive? Is it built on the fly by the Create recovery drive process? Any way to get the Create recovery drive process to use the custom recimage?

If you mean from a recovery drive below, then it gets created during the process. You can boot from the recovery drive to do a reset that would use the created custom reset image.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4...dows-10-a.html

Yep, we'll have to test it in the RTM to verify if it no longer works.

It currently still works in build 10162.

If you mean from a recovery drive below, then it gets created during the process. You can boot from the recovery drive to do a reset that would use the created custom reset image.

Is this documented in any of the tutorials? If not, it should be as there is going to be a real need for it once Windows 10 hits the non-techy world.

Something along the lines of

1. Create Recovery drive
2. Create updated custom image
3. How to restore custom image from booted Recovery drive