Refresh Your PC–Win 8

Windows 8 has  some new features to make it much easier to  restore the OS.

In previous versions of Windows, to fix major problems with the OS you really had little option but to do a fresh install either from the disc or the hidden partition or ,if you were lucky enough to have one, from a system image from before the time that the problems occurred.  

Windows 8 has changed this and now has 2 “Push Button” functions – “Refresh your PC” and “Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows”.

“Refresh Your PC” retains your files but re-installs the OS and “Remove Everything and Reinstall Windows” wipes everything out and starts over.

I decided to try the “Refresh Your PC” and here is what happened.

You Find these functions  in Charms / Settings / Change PC Settings / General.

When you click the “Refresh your PC Without Affecting Your Files” -  “Get Started” button you get this warning:

Take notice particularly of the second last dot point.  I did not really pay attention  to it and, as someone who still lives mainly in the Desktop, I paid the price.

First, the good news – It is very easy and quick and did exactly what it said it would do. It kept all of my files plus all of the Tile Apps from the Windows store with their settings.  (e.g. the Weather App was put back with all of my personalised settings etc.)

Windows is restored as ‘activated’ and a check of Device Manager did not show any problems with drivers. My printer is on the network and it remained in Devices and Printers as the default printer. (I printed a test page to make sure that it still worked. It did.)  The network settings did not change but I have a wired connection to the router so I can’t say if things like WPA pass words need to be re-input.

About the only setting that it did not restore was my PIN sign In option. However this is no big deal and easy to reinstate and I now realise that this is what the second dot point says.

Also Windows Update needed to run again to re-install all updates.

The bad news (for me) is that it did exactly what it said it would do in terms of in the second last dot point. It removed all of my traditionally installed programs. Things like Chrome, Firefox, Paint.net, TrueCrypt and so on. It also removed MS Office which, to be fair, is not from the Windows App Store so I should have expected this as well.

In regard to MS Office, I note that it did retain the .pst file from Outlook (that I had started to set up but abandoned in favour of Live Mail).

I have gone to the subscription model of Office ( Office 365), so putting it back was painless. However, I will have to restore all the other programs.

I will do this over time and also take this opportunity to first try to use any alternative Win 8 Apps -  like the PDF reader instead of installing Adobe Reader or Foxit etc..

In summary this is an excellent feature and is much better than how it had to be done in previous Windows versions.

But be sure to first do a back up of your data (just in case) and make a list of the traditionally installed programs and ensure that you have the install discs and / or the activation codes for any programs that you have installed/ purchased. Or better still, try to make more use of the Tile interface/ Windows App Store.