Windows 10: Problem with power plans not showing at all

Hi. Had a bad computer day and did a windows 10 reset. After the reset and some updates, when I go to control panel/system and security/power options, I see this:





It does not show the balanced/recommended plan I'm on and should normally show. If I click on create a power plan, it then shows this:





And if I try and create a plan it shows this:







I ran an sfc scan and also did dism restore health and no problems found or fixed. Also did power trouble shooting.

I then tried to do a windows 10 repair install twice with media creation tool but I believe it did not complete correctly because the first time I had secure boot enabled and the second time windows may not have been fully updated. In both cases near the end the final part looked different then what Brink's tutorial showed. it looked like the usual update instead of an upgrade with the big circle.

So I'm considering now doing a repair install a third time with secure boot disabled and now laptop updated to v1709 16299.251. I'm hoping that will work.

I'm wondering though, before I spend another hour or two doing this, is there another simpler fix I could try?

Thanks in advance.

:)

 

Only 1 power plan after the Fall Creators update

I have the same problem in that there is only the 'Balanced' power plan available but the missing two show up in the custom power plans option. However as a stop gap I have recreated the 'High' and 'Power Saving' plans using the custom plan option and called
them 'High!' and 'Power Saving!'. Seems to work until Microsoft fix the problem. I seem to vaguely recall that there was a similar problem in the last major update.

 

Only 1 power plan after the Fall Creators update

Same problem here. After a few days of updating to Fall Creators, I only have a 'balanced' power option available but when creating a custom power plan, the two other plans show up.

 

Hi, at this point you might want to try
- checking your disk
- clean installing Win 10
Clean Install Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials

 

Yeah I ended up doing a clean install with the media creation tool. Now it's the way it should be thanks.

 

Good- so no hardware issues hopefully.

Now consolidate what you have by creating a base disk image (e.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + external storage for disk image sets).
Image all the partitions comprising Windows (it's a built in option).
Then keep your image set up to date by periodically creating a differential image (smaller, faster).

Then if sthg goes wrong- even a disk failure- you can recover to a previous working state without doing a clean install.

 

Yup that is what I'm going to do. Thank you.

 

Quick question: What is the difference between downloading the Windows 10 media putting on flash drive and booting into and installing it versus using the media creation to do an in place upgrade which can also act to repair Windows 10 with all personal files settings removed?

The first one is a truly clean installation right? What is happening with the other one?

 

Your second scenario is sometimes called an "in-place repair upgrade" or an "upgrade repair install." It's described in this excellent TenForums tutorial: Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade. Basically, it replaces the OS files, rebuilds the registry, and restores some (but not all) preferences and settings to their defaults, but leaves already-installed applications and all user files on the %Homedrive% volume (usually C: on most Windows installs).
HTH,
--Ed--

 

Thanks Ed. When you do an upgrade/repair install with the media creation tool, and choose to not keep any personal files or settings at all, remove everything, does it still retain some settings/applications that are unique to repaired OS as you describe and that are different than what a clean install would do?

I'm asking because I did this upgrade tossing everything and when I go to install a few up to date or specific drivers after, it states they are already on machine and would I like to overwrite etc but according to device manager the version of driver there is different so it is not the same.. unless it somewhere else... how does it know of it? It doesn't always give this message so it doesn't seem to be doing it in some general way because i have a version of the driver installed.

 

AFAIK, drivers do get replaced when you perform an in-place upgrade install. Why do I say this? Because you can look in the Reliability History for your PC on the day when the upgrade install occurred, and see for yourself that ALL of the DRIVERS get installed. Here's a representative snippet thereof:




As you can see, there's a huge honkin' list of drivers on what is "Day 1" for that most recent install on my production PC, on which I apparently made such an install on February 22, 2018. It may therefore just be the case that Windows Update has gotten "smarter" about recognizing and finding drivers for your PC.
HTH,
--Ed--

 

Thanks again Ed.

Last question - do you think one is better than the other in terms of eliminating any possible problems with an OS by means of reinstalling it - the repair/upgrade versus clean install from flash drive? Do they basically have the same effect or would clean install be better?

 

A clean install is the fix-it strategy of last resort. And if you do that, you should also completely wipe the system drive and either re-partition it yourself or let Windows do it for you when you start that install up. That way you get rid of ALL TRACES of the preceding install, which is presumably what you're trying to do anyway. At least, that's how I understand it...
HTH, and keep those great questions coming!
--Ed--