Windows 8 built-in refresh/reinstall options - Any good?

[Dos_Box]

My Laptop is 2 years old now and getting a bit sluggish, even with the ssd so I think it's time for the good old tried and tested 'wipe and re-install'.

Before I resort to such drastic measures though it occurs to me that if I were to reinstall using the Dell restore partition it would re-install Windows 8 and I would have to go through the very long Windows 8.1 update process + installing the not insubstancial updates after that.

Or, I could use the inbuilt Windows 8 Refresh and Reinstall options that come with the OS.

What I'd like to know first though is do they do what they say and is it like a real reinstall i.e. the registry wiped and restored to it's pristine and uncluttred state?

Has anyone done this and if you have please let me know what, if any, problems you found.

[Arthur]

Or, I could use the inbuilt Windows 8 Refresh and Reinstall options that come with the OS.

You won't save any time by using the Refresh/Reset feature if your Windows 8 recovery image hasn't been updated to 8.1.

 

If you upgraded your PC from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 and your PC has a Windows 8 recovery partition, resetting your PC will restore Windows 8. You'll need to upgrade to Windows 8.1 after the reset has finished. (Source)

 

Therefore you would be better off downloading the latest Windows 8.1 install media from Microsoft and re-installing the operating system with that since there will be far fewer updates to install.

 

If you want to backup your drivers before wiping out the OS, run the following PowerShell command.

 

Export-WindowsDriver –Online -Destination D:\Drivers

 

Once Windows has been installed, activated, updated and setup exactly how you want it you could create your own custom refresh image so that the next time you use the built-in refresh/reset feature your computer will be restored back to that state.

 

You can do this using the built-in recimg command (essentially the two commands below) or a program called RecImg Manager which is just a GUI for recimg.

 

recimg /createimage C:\RefreshImage
recimg /setcurrent C:\RefreshImage

 

What I'd like to know first though is do they do what they say and is it like a real reinstall i.e. the registry wiped and restored to it's pristine and uncluttered state?

The registry (and everything else) will be completely wiped if you "Reset your PC". I have done this a couple of times myself in Windows 8.1 and it did work as intended.

 

problems.

On PCs that has been upgraded to Windows 8.1 from 8.0 a common problem was the "

" error.

 

http://a.pomf.se/iylkgz.png

Edited March 11, 2015 by Arthur

[Dos_Box]

Cheers

A new custom recovery partition could be a good idea. I have a 512GB SSD so no problem with space there.