I want to recount how 'Reset my PC' saved my *** recently. My misery started when I replaced a failing 10-year old Lexmark printer with a new Epson WF-4740 AIO. Long story short(er) I was unable to uninstall the Lexmark and made the mistake of trying to manually delete the Lexmark drivers and clean up the Registry. BIG MISTAKE.
Before modifying the Registry I needed to back it up. In the old days you could simply make a copy of Registry.dat but now you create a System Restore Point. After rebooting, I ended up with an unusable system -- any app (Word, Wordpad even Notepad) with print functionality was broken. I could not even set margins.
So, I attempted to roll back using my System Restore Point. It said "Restoring registry ..." but nothing changed. The Registry was as corrupted as before. After considerable research I decided on 'Reset This PC'. The BIG Positive is that you can choose to keep your personal files. The only real Negative is that you will have to reinstall some apps.
After 1-1/2 hours or so and several reboots (similar to upgrading Win10) I had a fully functional system with the same version number. All of my personal files were intact. Yes, I had to reinstall some apps but fewer than I thought!
All in all it was a very positive experience and saved me the grief of having to purchase a copy of Win10 and reinstall everything. And, there were many other pluses
I urge anyone whose PC is hosed and who is contemplating doing a clean install of Win10 to instead try 'Reset This PC'. It can save you a lot of time ... and maybe some money. Here's where to find it:
Settings > Updates & security > Recovery
Before modifying the Registry I needed to back it up. In the old days you could simply make a copy of Registry.dat but now you create a System Restore Point. After rebooting, I ended up with an unusable system -- any app (Word, Wordpad even Notepad) with print functionality was broken. I could not even set margins.
So, I attempted to roll back using my System Restore Point. It said "Restoring registry ..." but nothing changed. The Registry was as corrupted as before. After considerable research I decided on 'Reset This PC'. The BIG Positive is that you can choose to keep your personal files. The only real Negative is that you will have to reinstall some apps.
After 1-1/2 hours or so and several reboots (similar to upgrading Win10) I had a fully functional system with the same version number. All of my personal files were intact. Yes, I had to reinstall some apps but fewer than I thought!
All in all it was a very positive experience and saved me the grief of having to purchase a copy of Win10 and reinstall everything. And, there were many other pluses
- the Lexmark printer was completely gone -!-
- the PC is noticeably faster
- a lot of "crap" and unused apps were gone
I urge anyone whose PC is hosed and who is contemplating doing a clean install of Win10 to instead try 'Reset This PC'. It can save you a lot of time ... and maybe some money. Here's where to find it:
Settings > Updates & security > Recovery
