Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade  

Hello @schwartzasher, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

If you select the "keep everything" option, you won't lose anything. Everything will be the same as before except for what is noted in the red warning box at the top of the tutorial.

There may be a few minor effects:
This will refresh Windows, after the manner of a Windows installation.
- all/most associations will be unchanged
- all your programs will be left installed
- However: if you have installed some on a 2nd drive, these must be uninstalled or reinstalled on C: - else you will get an error message that you can not keep my apps because they arein an unsupported directory.
- no personal data should be affected
- you will lose any custom fonts
- you will lose any customised system icons
- you may need to re-establish your Wi-Fi connection
- you will need to redo Windows updates subsequent to the build you have used for the repair install
- Windows.old will be created
- system restore will be turned off- you should turn it on again and I recommend you manually schedule a daily restore point.
- you will need to redo any language downloads including the display language if you changed that)
- inactive title bar colouring (if used) will be reset to default
- if Qttabbar is installed, you need to re-enable it in explorer (Options, check Qttabbar)

Brink said:

Hello srdjanmax,

Usually when a repair install fails, you'll need to clean install instead.

Well it really depends on what has failed. Many repair installs fail due to boot issues and I have found our trusty friend Macrium Reflect more often than repairs the install. I think that is because it (as I understand it) literally wipes all the boot files and rebuilds them from scratch. Of course, this may not be entirely relevant here, but always worth a try.

cereberus said:

Well it really depends on what has failed. Many repair installs fail due to boot issues and I have found our trusty friend Macrium Reflect more often than repairs the install. I think that is because it (as I understand it) literally wipes all the boot files and rebuilds them from scratch. Of course, this may not be entirely relevant here, but always worth a try.

Very good point cereberus!!!
If more people would make regular image backups with the Free Macrium Reflect, when there Windows is running stable, they would NEVER need to do a Clean install again. Would save them a lot of trouble.

OldMike65 said:

Very good point cereberus!!!
If more people would make regular image backups with the Free Macrium Reflect, when there Windows is running stable, they would NEVER need to do a Clean install again. Would save them a lot of trouble.

Actually was not specifically referring to making an image backup, but using its repair capability, but you are right re. image backups.

cereberus said:

Well it really depends on what has failed. Many repair installs fail due to boot issues and I have found our trusty friend Macrium Reflect more often than repairs the install. I think that is because it (as I understand it) literally wipes all the boot files and rebuilds them from scratch. Of course, this may not be entirely relevant here, but always worth a try.

I couldn't agree more! I can't even count the times booting to Macrium Rescue to fix Windows boot issues have saved my athletic yet beautiful and sexy a** :)

Hi guys, here's what happened these 3 days, I'm trying to repair my corrupted Windows 10, because now I cant even open the start menu. So the first time I tried to download the ISO, at 50% the Media Creation Tool suddenly disappear, I dont know why it happened maybe because of my corrupted Windows, so the next day I try again, this time it disappears at around 70%, Im feeling pretty pissed how ridiculous this is.

This is because I have a really bad internet, Im somewhere in third world country and downloading this ISO to finish will take me 1 whole day, so earlier today I decided to download it in my other laptop so the Tool wont disappear again hopefully, its at 40% right now, and then suddenly I came across this tutorial, and it says that I cant keep anything if the language is different? What does it mean? Because at the other laptop, I put English (United States) instead of English (United Kingdom) at the options, do I have to download everything from the start again? Or is there any workaround so I have this PC in the same language as the ISO Im downloading? I mean whats the difference? They are both ENNGLISH right? Sorry Im pretty frustrated I hope I dont have to redownload it again.

Also my windows is still not activated and I dont have product key, can I still do this repair install?

Hello @grnlizard, and welcome to Ten Forums. :)

If you don't see the "Keep personal files and apps" at step 12, then you'll need to cancel and try again with English (UK) instead. Otherwise, it'll be fine.

Activation won't affect being able to do a repair install. It'll only still be not activated afterwards.

Have you already tested by creating a new account on the PC to see if everything works fine in it? It may be a another option.

I hope the repair install will work for you to avoid a full clean install.