Stuff happens. Sometimes you install a dodgy piece of software. Sometimes the cumulative effect of lots of installs messes up the PC. Sometimes you\u2019re running a pre-beta developer preview release of an operating system and it breaks. And that\u2019s when some new features in Windows 8 come in handy.<\/p>\n
In Control Panel, under General, you can find two useful features:<\/p>\n
Refresh Your PC<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n This will allow you to undo changes to your PC back to the Windows defaults without affecting your data or files. I did this yesterday on my Microsoft Build Samsung slate PC when the gyroscope functionality broke. It took around 5 minutes, and I got a \u201cnew\u201d operating system that remembered who I was and retained my limited amount of data (in My Pictures). <\/p>\n A application report is posted on the desktop. This details the applications that were uninstalled, and in my experience, it gave me URLs to download the software again.<\/p>\n Reset Your PC<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n You might want to sell your Windows 8 PC on Ebay<\/a>. You can reset the operating system without any media by hitting this option. It will restore the entire OS to factory defaults, wiping all of your data (allegedly). <\/p>\n EDIT:<\/p>\n I did a reset a few minutes ago to see how it would work. It worked as advertised; the PC was reset to the original installation and all my data and settings were gone. It took around 5 minutes to reset, and maybe another 5 to do the mini-setup wizard.<\/p>\n Stuff happens. Sometimes you install a dodgy piece of software. Sometimes the cumulative effect of lots of installs messes up the PC. Sometimes you\u2019re running a pre-beta developer preview release of an operating system and it breaks. And that\u2019s when some new features in Windows 8 come in handy. In Control Panel, under General, you … Continue reading “Refresh or Reset Windows 8”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-11719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-desktop","tag-windows-8"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}