Windows 8 "Reset my PC"

[bassoprofundo]

Ok... So I've dug around the net for this but I can't find an answer anywhere... Does anyone know whether or not the "Reset my PC" feature built into Win8 touches other drives besides the main boot/system drive? The documentation for it seems pretty much exclusively centered around single drive, Oem-type systems. I'm having a problem I can't figure out after an in-place upgrade and want to utilize it, but I' m worried it'll touch the data on my other drives. I can, of course, unplug them and/or install from scratch, but I just wondered if anyone had a definitive answer on this. Thanks in advance.

 

[JackMDS]

What exactly "Reset my PC" feature" is in your mind?

If you have multiple Drives you changed the OS from Win7/XP/Vista to Win 8, Data drives stay as is.

 

[bassoprofundo]

The one described here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/04/refresh-and-reset-your-pc.aspx

Note the description Sinofsky gives of what happens...


"Resetting your Windows 8 PC goes like this:

1. The PC boots into the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE).
2. Windows RE erases and formats the hard drive partitions on which Windows and personal data reside.
3. Windows RE installs a fresh copy of Windows.
4. The PC restarts into the newly installed copy of Windows."

He doesn't really say if "on which... personal data reside" includes other drives that are, for example, linked into your Windows libraries. This new feature is Win8 specific and doesn't require install media or anything. I'm very well versed in reimaging boxes with previous OSes (which is why I tend to keep data off my primary OS drive), but I was thinking of trying this just for grins and didn't want to have it get a little too aggressive in wiping stuff out.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't trust ANYTHING that automatically wipes data, regardless of what the documentation says. Drives are easy to disconnect, so I'd disconnect them.

 

[dlock13]

Personally, I believe it wipes your main hard drive which has your apps and information stored in them hence the whole "personal data".

 

[JackMDS]

May be the OP wants to explain what exactly he wants to do.

If you did an in-place upgrade and it is working well than there is nothing else that you need to do.

If some components are Not working you have to deal with them directly there is No magic Reset that take care of a need for drivers or reconfiguration of specific components.

If you want to wipe everything OS an Data and start a "New life".

You do not have to install any thing to Wipe clean your computer including the OS.

Download this freeware make a Boot CD and wipe everything (be careful you lose you Data as well).

http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Then put a new Boot DVD (or flash drive) with Win 8 retail and install a new OS.

 

[bassoprofundo]

Thanks for the feedback here, all... I ended out just booting with an Acronis CD, taking a snapshot of the drive, and doing a clean reinstall just to be on the safe side. Again, this is what I'd normally do when "upgrading" to a new OS anyway, but this time around, given all the hype around Win8's upgrade process, I figured I'd give it a shot. My intent was to go back to a "bare metal" install anyway but retain my data after having a few "glitches" after the Win7->8 in-place upgrade.

All seemed to be working ok after the upgrade, but before my last reboot, I had reinstalled VMware, installed Asus' "AiCharger" software, and also added Media Center via the "Add Features to Windows" control panel item. (I'm leaning toward the Asus as the culprit, but I'm not sure.) When I rebooted the last time, it went into a BSOD loop (for lack of a better term) where it would throw a "System Thread Exception Not Handled" error, would try to do an auto repair, and would then tell me that Windows was unable to automatically repair, leaving me at the manual repair options. Those included the "Refresh my PC" and "Reset my PC" options as well as the manual command prompt-type options. After doing a few things to manually try and fix from the command prompt as well as booting into safe mode for a few things, I just decided "screw it, I'll reimage." I tend to normally be of the same mind as lxskllr said above, which is not to trust any of the helpful "automatic" type of options, but the refresh and reset options were intriguing, though, hence my question.

If it wasn't my primary machine, I'd have been tempted to go ahead and try, but it's not worth the risk. I'm pretty sure that it won't touch secondary drives like dlock13 said above, but why chance it? Thanks again for the input, folks.