In our tests we were able to launch some of our old programs from Windows.old, which gives a little extra confidence until you decide it's time to clean everything up for good. However do note, your installed programs will be gone (OEM and otherwise).Īlong with saving and restoring your core data, the utility creates a Windows.old folder of your previous installation, so you can retrieve something if necessary. The option is called 'Reset this PC' which will boot you into a fresh installation of Windows while preserving your documents/files.
If you've been thinking about reinstalling Windows 10 because of stability issues, malware infections, software bloat or some other issue with your system, it may come as great news that Microsoft has built in a simple method of reinstalling the operating system without deleting your user settings or data and without necessarily going through the full process of creating a bootable disk or drive.
