Recovery Environment (WinRe) question

My PC is running fine but I was curious to see what options are available in the Recovery environment on my PC as it isnt something Ive ever had to use.
So I held down the shift key and restarted my PC which took me into the Recovery Environment. I selected Windows startup settings to see what options were in there (Safe mode, Safe Mode with networking etc).
I was reading through all the various options without selecting anything and my PC powered down. I was on the screen for a minute before my PC switched itself off. I thought this was a bit strange so I repeated the same procedure a couple of times. Again my PC switched itself off after a minute. Is this normal behaviour? When I tested to see if it was working correctly if I was to make a selection I selected the Safe Mode option and my PC booted into safe mode as expected. I know this seems a bit of a weird question but I wanted to see if others are seeing this too?

Definitely should not have turned itself off - at least in my experience. After how many minutes in safe mode RE did that happen?

@sportsfan148

There's two major methods of "recovery" that don't include the "recovery environment".

Most on here use backup software like Macrium Reflect 7.xx (free)
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Just FYI... I have 26.7 GB on my C:\ drive. It takes me under 2 minutes to make a backup, and the same to restore from a backup.


The 2nd method would be an "in-place upgrade", which in short, re-installs the latest version of Windows 10, while keeping your programs and data intact. This procedure takes less than 2 hours (on a slow computer, done by a first timer).

On my computer it took less than a 1/2 hour total.
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade




Now that "in-place upgrade" tutorial has many ways to do it. Here's the short version, that is the fastest and easiest...




Here is the translation of the tutorial....

Go here and get the Media Creation Tool and save it to your desktop.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10

RUN the Media Creation Tool and choose: Create an ISO image... save IT to your desktop.
Right click the ISO image and choose: MOUNT
Open File Explorer and you will see a new drive letter. It will look like a DVD optical drive.
Double click the new drive letter to open it.
Find setup.exe and double click it to start the in-place upgrade.

Choose the Upgrade option and tell it to save your programs and data, when it asks.

After it's all done... to UNmount the ISO image, right click the new drive letter and choose: EJECT.


The ONLY thing you will lose is some of your personalizations. Your programs and data will be intact.

sportsfan148 said:

There was no BSOD its just that if I dont make a selection on the Startup Settings screen before one minute is up my PC powers off. If I make a selection the selection works OK...when I select Safe Mode for example. Im just curious if others are seeing this thats all

- - - Updated - - -



Just out of curiosity have you ever done an in place upgrade repair on a PC with two drives, a separate windows system drive C: (I have an SSD) and all other Apps/Games installed on a standard HDD drive D:. I wondered if you need to reinstall the Apps/Games that are on the other drive or if they work OK and are unaffected by the upgrade?

That, I couldn't tell you about.

As for the PC shutting off, I would "guess" that there's a built in time limit??
If you don't make a choice in so many seconds...it shuts off. It might even "tell" you that's the case.
Most of us have learned to ignore those timer warnings. Like when installing Windows...it says computer will reboot in 14 seconds, or w/e.

On top of that you're on a pre-built computer. Who knows what DELL may have done or made happen.

There is a program called WinAero Tweaker, that will give you (at every boot) all of those choices, that will remain there, until, you hit Enter. It'll also do about 200 other things as well.
https://winaero.com/comment.php?comment.news.1836
















Lastly, the Macrium Backup software will handle the fact that you moved a bunch of things to a different drive.
Macrium Reflect can make a full OS image backup of your operating system (aka, C:\ drive).
It's like system restore, but it actually works.
So, if you restore from a Macrium backup, it will put the C:\ drive back to exactly the way it was, when you made the backup.



/edit

For years I tried to get Windows operating systems to behave like they were supposed to. For the most part this worked, because MS was testing things BEFORE releasing them.

Now, they pretty much use us as guinea pigs. So I decided, I would make Windows 10 work like I wanted it to.

Backup software is a must on Windows 10. The reason I chose Macrium Reflect, (besides the fact that just about everyone on here, uses it), was because it has only one Service and one process. That's less than any other backup software I've ever seen or heard of.

AFTER you get a serious backup plan, then you can pretty much do.test.try anything...and if it doesn't work... poof... restore from a backup.
Macrium even has bootable media CD/USB), so you can access your backups even if Windows won't boot.