jitl parent
Re-installing Windows is trivial these days. You just click the item in the Start menu, it does some work, then reboots to the existing recover partition to finish up, restores your account, and you drop back to windows desktop after logging in again. If you have OneDrive enabled, you still see all your files.
Does that actually completely blow away and reformat the filesystem? Meaning if you only have local files, they're then gone? From clicking an item on the Start menu?
I guess I'm not surprised with how frequently "reinstall Windows" is offered as a solution, that there is now some lighter version of that. But really I was talking about obtaining/creating installation media and reinstalling from scratch.
No, it doesn't really blow away anything. Just some copying around and over. Preserving all the malware, viruses, rootkits and stuff.
Except of course, licenses and copy protection. That stuff is gone and you have to buy it all again, since the install-id is regenerated.
You can choose "keep my files" or "remove everything", the remove everything version + "clean files" does actually remove everything. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/reset-your-pc-0e...