Windows 10: Factory resetting my laptop after installing windows 10.

Hello this is my first visit to the forum, as the time nears for the windows 10 upgrade I had a few questions.

My Samsung Activ9 came with windows 8 preinstalled, to upgrade it to 8.1 I had to manually install every windows update by hand and some had to be installed before the others, so hundreds of individual updates had to be done which took me all day. I upgraded to windows 8.1 eventually and thought 'excellent, no more manually installing updates as recovering my system would mean starting with a fresh copy of windows 8.1 right? Nope, i few months ago I had need to recover my notebook to factory defaults and when it was finished it booted into.. yep, windows 8, so again I had to do the individual update thingy (sorry for all of the tech talk *Tongue).

So now to my question (at last you shout)..
Will this upgrade to windows 10 mean that should the worst happen and I need to factory reset again, that windows 10 will be the default OS?
Or, will i need to install it as a fresh install?

Sorry for the long winded post guys.

Jim

:)

 

Help with DNS Unlocker!

How and when did you "restore the laptop back to factory settings?"

Did you format the hard-drive when you "restored the laptop back to factory settings?"

Did you save any data prior to "restoring the laptop back to factory settings" and then restore it to the hard-drive afterwards?

Hi Robear,

What I did to reset my laptop back to factory setting was Settings --> Update & Security --> Recovery --> Reset this PC --> Restore factory settings

Regards,

 

Factory Reset after upgrading to Win 10

So something went wrong with my laptop after i upgraded to Windows 10, so I was thinking if i could factory reset my laptop, but then it would go back to Windows 8.1, but is there any chance that i will be asked again for a free upgrade after i factory reset
and go back to windows 8.1 ?

Is there any way of factory resetting it without going back to Windows 8.1 ?

 

You could use Macrium Reflect and make system images, and then if something goes wrong just 1. boot to Advanced Option and re-image 2. Boot to recovery media(DVD or USB) and re-image to a prior working system image that has everything installed. Or you can create your own custom recovery image that has everything too. Best is to use both options, because you never know...

 

Thank you for your help, I did have Acronis a while back and it worked well, however I was told it didn't work for SSDs, maybe I should check to see if there is a version that would work.

Jim

 

Macrium Reflect Free

 

As long as the Factory Recovery Process is registered to the Windows 8 install.wim - doing a reset will reset back to windows 8

If you where to replace that "FACTORY" install.wim with a custom windows 10 install.wim - the reset would reset back to windows 10

 

I had to do a factory reset today and I am now back to the nightmare that is trying to get the laptop to update so I can install the 8.1 update. Bloody thing wont get past the searching for updates stage.

Jim

 

Of course you could just download an ISO for Windows 8.1 and make a DVD.

 

would I need a new product key or would my oem key for win 8 work?

 

You would use your existing product key.

 

Thanks, that worked and I now have a clean install of 8.1, going to back it up in the morning.

Jim

 

And, it is best to have more than one restorable OS image. I have each computer's OS image on each of my two external HDs. Like a previous poster wisely said: you never know...