System Repair, Reinstall, and Reimage

---

If System Restore or Startup Repair does not work, use a system repair tool and restore from backup.

• different Windows versions have different system recovery tools

Creating and Using a Recovery Image

• can create a complete backup with system configuration and data files as an image
• best compression ratio possible is 2:1
  • 20 GB system : 10 GB backup
• create using Backup and Restore Applet in Control Panel
  • Tasks pane > Create a system image
• recover the system using Advanced Boot Option or the System Image Recovery option from repair disk or recovery environment

Reinstalling Windows

• if you don’t have an image, you will need to reinstall Windows
• use Reset this PC option in recovery environment
  • choose either:
    • Keep my files
      • repairs existing installation using local setup cache or downloading from Microsoft cloud servers
    • Remove everything
      • recopies the system files and reverts all PC settings to default
      • can preserve user personalization settings, data files, and apps from Windows Store
      • option to securely delete information from drive