No.
Restore points are an entirely different thing.
Restore points contain a small set of system files that can be restored [to cope with Windows problems]. I have found them unreliable so I don't bother with them at all any more.
Restore points do not contain everything. Images do.
Denis
Folks, I am looking at several used laptop options, some of which have Win11 Pro on them. I have never run Win11 and wasn't ready to make the transition (I tend to be one of those people that are slow to transition to the latest-n-greatest stuff). If I buy one with Win11 Pro, is it possible to downgrade to Win10 Pro without buying a new license? In other words, can the Win11 key stand good for a Win10 installation? Or is that a completely ridiculous idea?
Thing about buying computers online they often will advertise and market
1TB or 500GB HD. ( Usually Not SSD and if SSD 40GB )
Windows 10/11 installed
RAM amount and They might mention the ram speed as well.
But those things do not matter at all to somebody who is experienced enough and probably have these parts lying around.
There are so many variables in purchasing anything that has been around for awhile. The buttons turn to mush, parts might not work the same. So forth. It is literally no different then buying a new car only in five years for it to turn to rubbish. Then you might not even want it anymore and nobody wants it for the same price it was, because the parts are not present. However they have cars less then $2000 that is on the highway all the time, and the parts are presented, leaving room for other quality of life advancements.
............
Leave the OS as is. You could download just about any Virus busting software and do a scan. Or even load the Drive into another machine and scan it with your OS. That is being paranoid.
When I buy any computer I prefer it to not have any OS installed. I could install it myself.
.........
old me
I brought a workstation labtop ( still good today ) but I never had Windows 10 and it was $700. Now it is $15 ( If I find it for a good deal ) if I start looking. Which I purchase for parts.
new me
I would buy a labtop ( or computer ) and just copy the OS and install it into the computer without or putting in any kind of key, or associating with any kind of account. ( despite touching base ). I do not need Windows because I have a working copy that I have been updating for years. That is the final straw for me. I go online and download whatever OS I want and install whatever OS I want and could careless. I block updates and whatever I am able to.
...............
Folks, I am working on my new Dell laptop and am trying to follow @Try3's advice by testing my system image on the boot disk. My system image is almost 20Gb, so I saved it to an external NTFS USB drive. After enabling "legacy option ROMs" in the BIOS, I was able to see it as a boot option. However, when I select it for boot, it says "selected boot device failed." Some web searches indicate I might need a FAT32 format. Is that true? If so, how do I format the USB to FAT32 since that option is unavailable in newer Windows disk tools?
Last edited by mridzon; 3 Days Ago at 19:44.
The limit with FAT32 on Windows is 32GB and single-file size of 4GB. A lot depends upon the BIOS and whether booting MBR or GPT/UEFI. For cleaning up Win10 computers I use the MCT/Media Creation Tool by Microsoft to create the bootable USB Thumb drive, 8GB or larger, which formats as FAT32 and also to download the .iso file used to burn a bootable DVD+R/DL. The 8.2GB DL/Dual Layer disc is necessary as it has to be more than more than the 4.7GB DVD disc.
What I suggested was testing the boot disk i.e. boot from it to make sure it works.
Not the image, the boot disk.
Your system imaging utility offers to make a boot disk for you somewhere in its menu system. Stick in a USB stick & let it make it into its boot disk for you.
It will only need a small USB. I use old 1GB/2GB/4GB/8GB USB sticks for the job.
It will almost certainly format it as Fat32. You will almost certainly not need to do the formatting yourself.
General info:-
Windows can format drives as Fat32 if they are 32GB or smaller.
If you ever need to format a larger drive as Fat32, you can use MiniToolPartitionWizard to do it. You might never need to do this. I only have one large drive that I format as Fat32 and I do that so it is very easily swapped between my computer and my Android phone.
Denis
Last edited by Try3; 3 Days Ago at 02:46.
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