Reinstall for fun and profit
Keep lists of installed programs, and their activation keys, to rapidly make your old PC feel like new again.
Reinstalling Windows 10 is a fairly trivial task. Put in the right media, boot from it, grind away the old OS, and replace it with the pristine bits of a shiny new install. This can be a painless, if time-consuming, procedure that leaves you with a like-new PC, or perhaps an even better one if you were unlucky enough to buy a PC burdened with preinstalled trashware.
Before you do this, make sure you’ve checked off a few prerequisites, all of which are good practice even if you’re not planning to wipe everything and start again.
First, keep a record of your product key (if you have one – most likely if you’ve upgraded from a previous version of Windows), or make sure your digital licence is well looked after. If you’ve bought a PC in the last few years, you’re probably using a digital licence rather than a key. Check Settings > Update & Security > Activation. If you see the message “Windows is activated with a digital licence,” this means you’re digitally signed, but you should link that license to your Microsoft account in case of installation issues or future hardware changes. Head to Settings > Accounts > Your Info, sign in with your Microsoft account details, and the message should change to “Windows is activated with a digital licence associated with your Microsoft account.”
Key information
Next, dig out the keys for all your crucial software and keep them safe too, as you’ll need to reinstate everything manually when performing a full reinstall. You can use PowerShell to make a list of your installed programs; run it as administrator, and type: Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\ Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | SelectObject DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table – AutoSize > C:\software.txt
A list is created as a file called software.txt in the root of your C drive.
Tweak if you want a different file name or location. Keep a copy of this elsewhere, in case you come to your reinstalled machine and realise there’s something you’ve forgotten.
If you want to make your job easier, ProduKey ( http://nirsoft.net) can dig up keys for many Microsoft apps and Windows; also consider using a lockable password manager, such as LastPass ( www.lastpass.com), to not only keep a record of logins, but to store details about your software so it’s always there when you need it.
You can’t back up programs
(Windows’ file structure doesn’t work like that), but you can (and should) back up every other little thing. Backing up your hard drive using something like Macrium Reflect might seem like a solid idea, and it’s the best way to make sure you don’t miss anything, but a compressed copy won’t give you access to the files you need once it’s made, and it’s pointless if you’re reinstalling to fix a broken system – instead, consider
Windows File History to perform rolling backups of crucial folders as you use your machine. It’s slow to start, but if this is something you set up to run invisibly as you use your PC (and, ideally, back up to different hardware periodically), you always have a backup ready when you need one. Try to include driver installation files in your personal folders, to be caught by File History
– and consider creating a second, manual backup of all of your important files. Check them both for integrity before you pull the trigger.
One last consideration: DRM. It’s a menace, but never more so than when you have a bunch of DRMed files that are tied to an account that limits PC authorisations. Kill your current install, and you might not be able to get that authorisation back – you could even lose access to all the things you’ve bought; DRM is cruel like that. So, make sure any management app, such as iTunes, has been de-authorised before you leave your current install behind.
Installation art
With all this done, go ahead and reinstall. You can create your own installation media by heading to www. microsoft.com/en-us/softwaredownload/windows10 and using the media creation tool to put the latest update of Windows 10 on a USB stick ready for installation. Over the page, we show you everything you need to reinstall your operating system, but a couple of notes first: You’ll want to select Install Windows Only, because the Upgrade option will leave your PC basically as it was; and you can skip inserting a product key – you can do this later, or your PC will activate itself when you sign in to your Microsoft account.