Problem resetting PC - no recovery image registered

SIW2 said:

Why? How can it know what image know what image you wish to use, or where you have put it ? It is an option you can set up yourself.

Because "Reset this PC" is meant to be an out of the box solution to cleaning up your installation.


"When you use the “Reset this PC” feature in Windows, Windows resets itself to its factory default state. If you purchased a PC and it came with Windows 10 installed, your PC will be in the same state you received it in. All the manufacturer installed software and drivers that came with the PC will be reinstalled. If you installed Windows 10 yourself, it will be a fresh Windows 10 system without any additional software" - Everything You Need to Know About “Reset This PC” in Windows 8 and 10

MS seem to be constantly changing things. Not sure why. Perhaps they have a space saving fetish.

I tested the "keep files" aka refresh with a registered setosimage. It worked but took a while and it removed the windows 7 entry from bcd.

Then renamed the setosimage folder so the reagentc entry was no longer pointing at the install.wim.

Tried the "keep files" thing again. It worked but took a while and it removed the windows 7 entry from bcd. Exactly the same process and result as before.

I am not convinced it is using the install.wim. It appears to be using the component store from the current installation for "keep files " ( aka refresh).

What problems were you encountering that you attempted a reset?

Kyhi said:

With your Fresh Install - it will restore the state of the Windows OS Only - Windows 10 Uses the WinSxs files to do this....
Windows 10 does not use a Recovery Image as in prior OS versions...
Windows 10 uses a provisioning package and OEM customization xml files...
The Factory State Recovery is provided by the OEM (System Builder)
In this case you are the System builder and windows only knows how to reset/refresh itself with the original OS file state... So what you are dong is not the proper way of doing it....

I'm not sure what the proper way to do it would be then, if it isn't Install OS > Reset this PC. I only started poking around with reagentc etc to try and figure out why it was failing in the first place.

zbook said:

What problems were you encountering that you attempted a reset?

Just wouldn't do it. Once it restarted it said there was a problem resetting and that nothing was changed.

did end up doing an in place "upgrade" using the setup.exe from my iso which worked. I then did a reset from that "new installation" and it worked perfectly fine.

I agree with Kyhi that it is meant to use the WinSxs files but is the mystery and why I was getting the errors from my original post saying it couldn't use the image - along with timestamps from when I attempted the reset.

Windows recovery options seem to be a right state because I have a ~500mb recovery partition which windows creates which I doubt is enough to actually contain any useful recovery files.

Seems to be that winre just uses stuff from the component store of current installation to attempt some kind of rebuild for the "keep files" ( aka refresh).

Haven't tested the not keep files thing - used to called reset. Maybe that can be coaxed to use a different source.

Otherwise, it is not difficult to just copy the installation media to a separate partition (replacing sources\install.wim within customized version if required).

Not sure why MS are messing with this now. I seem to recall the win 8 refresh worked well and quickly.

It insisted on downloading an update at the end of both "refreshes". It seems that update wasn't carried forward by the refresh.