Push-Button Reset Overview

The Refresh your PC preserves user data, important settings, and previously installed Windows Store apps.

Note
The Refresh your PC functionality requires that the Windows partition has enough free drive space to install the expanded recovery image, plus an additional 20 percent buffer. We recommend keeping the image size as small as possible.

This functionality performs the following processes:

1. The PC boots into Windows RE.
   
   
2. Push-button reset gathers user accounts, settings, data, and Windows Store apps.
   
   
3. Extensibility point: You can add a custom script here by adding its location to ResetConfig.xml in <BasicReset_BeforeImageApply>. For more information, see How to Add a Script to Push-Button Reset Features.
   
   
4. Push-button reset expands the factory image file in the recovery partition to a new, temporary operating system folder.
   
   
5. Push-button reset applies system-critical settings to the new operating system.
   
   
6. Push-button reset moves the old operating system to the Windows.old folder.
   
   
7. Push-button reset moves the new operating system from the temporary folder to the root of the current installation.
   
   
8. Extensibility point: You can add a custom script here by adding its location to ResetConfig.xml in <BasicReset_AfterImageApply>. For more information, see How to Add a Script to Push-Button Reset Features.
   
   
9. Push-button reset reboots the PC into the new operating system.
   
   
10. At first boot, push-button reset configures the factory image and reapplies preserved user data and settings.
    
    
11. The end user logs into their account.
    
    
12. Push-button reset reinstalls Windows Store apps from the Windows Store.
    
    
13. Push-button reset adds a list of desktop applications that were not able to be restored to the PC, and stores the list in a file on the Windows desktop.
    
    

User Data

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The following table shows which data folders are preserved, and which are refreshed to their factory-original state.

 

Preserved	Refreshed
These folders are copied from the old Windows installation to the new Windows installation: \Users\<profile>: All files and folders (except \Users\<profile>\AppData). All folders at the root of the Windows partition added by your user. For example, C:\MyData\. All file history versioning data. All folders on non-operating system partitions.	These folders are refreshed to the original state from the recovery image. User data in these folders is not kept. \ProgramData \Program Files \Program Files (x86) \Users\<profile>\AppData OEM folders. Any folders you added to the recovery image. \Windows

Note

After the Refresh your PC process is complete, users can retrieve their files that are not preserved for a limited amount of time from the C:\Windows.old folder. For example, the C:\ProgramData folder is moved to the C:\Windows.old\ProgramData folder. Although the Windows Task Scheduler deletes most of the C:\Windows.old directory during automatic maintenance, the C:\Windows.old\Users\ folder is kept until your user manually deletes the folder.

The Reset your PC functionality reinstalls the factory image; removes all user data, settings, and applications; and returns the PC to the default factory state. This function performs the following processes:

1. The PC boots into Windows RE.
   
   
2. If there is more than one user-accessible partition, then your user chooses whether to format the entire hard drive or just the Windows partition. For more information, see How to Configure Bare-Metal Restore/Recovery Media.
   
   
3. Your user chooses whether to simply format their hard drive partition (Quick option), or to clean the hard drive by attempting to overwrite all existing user data (Thorough option).
   
   

   Note
   Neither option is certified to meet government or industry data erasure standards.

4. Extensibility point: You can add a custom script here by adding its location to ResetConfig.xml in <FactoryReset_AfterDiskFormat>. For more information, see How to Add a Script to Push-Button Reset Features.
   
   
5. Push-button reset formats the data partitions (optional).
   
   
6. Push-button reset applies the factory image from the recovery partition to the Windows partition.
   
   
7. Push-button reset recreates the boot configuration data (BCD) store on the system partition.
   
   
8. Extensibility point: You can add a custom script here by adding its location to ResetConfig.xml in <FactoryReset_AfterImageApply>. For more information, see How to Add a Script to Push-Button Reset Features.
   
   
9. Push-button reset reboots the PC into the new operating system.
   
   
10. Windows starts the Out of Box Experience (OOBE).
    
    

If the user needs to replace their hard drive, or completely wipe it, they can use bootable recovery media, This function performs the following processes:

1. The PC boots into Windows RE.
   
   
2. Push-button reset identifies the system drive.
   
   
3. Push-button reset recreates and formats each of the partitions specified in the diskpart script.
   
   
4. Push-button reset applies the factory image file to the Windows partition.
   
   
5. Push-button configures Windows RE and the recovery image on the disk.
   
   
6. Windows restarts into the OOBE.
   
   

For more information, see How to Configure Bare-Metal Restore/Recovery Media.

To configure push-button reset features, you must deploy Windows by creating partitions and capturing and applying images. Windows Setup does not configure a push-button reset recovery image, nor does it prepare a recovery image partition.

We recommend adding the push-button reset recovery image into a dedicated partition at the end of the hard drive. By following this recommendation, your users can delete the partition to reclaim several gigabytes of drive space if needed without affecting the Windows RE tools, which can still function to repair common boot problems.

To prevent your users from accessing and formatting your recovery image partitions, set the following attributes:

• Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) : Set the partition type as PARTITION_MSFT_RECOVERY_GUID. In addition, set the partition attributes as GPT_ATTRIBUTE_PLATFORM_REQUIRED and GPT_BASIC_DATA_ATTRIBUTE_NO_DRIVE_LETTER. For more information, see PARTITION_INFORMATION_GPT structure.
  
  
• BIOS: Set the type to any value other than 0x7, 0x0c, 0x0b, 0x0e, 0x06, or 0x42.
  
  

For more information, see How to Deploy Push-Button Reset Features.

For more information about configuring hard drive partitions, see How to Configure UEFI/GPT-Based Hard Drive Partitions or How to Configure BIOS/MBR-Based Hard Drive Partitions.

The recovery image must be stored in a folder named Recovery, for example, R:\Recovery\install.wim.

The recovery image may be either a single Windows image file named install.wim, or a set of split Windows image files that meet the following criteria:

• The leading file must be named install.swm.
  
  
• Subsequent files must appear in the Install<image_index>.swm format, where <image_index> is the selected image in the collection. For example, Install2.swm, Install3.swm.
  
  
• Each .SWM file must be smaller than 4GB.
  
  
• All .SWM files must be located in the same folder as your recovery image, for example, R:\RecoveryImage\(install.swm, install2.swm, and install3.swm). For more information about splitting a Windows image file, see How to Split a Windows Image (.swm) File to Span Across Multiple DVDs or CDs.
  
  

For more information about deploying Push-button reset, see How to Deploy Push-Button Reset Features.

Push-button reset features attempt to preserve the activation status and store, and migrate these settings in both a refresh and reset. If the migration succeeds, the system will remain in an activated state after the refresh operation.

Note

The activation status may not be able to be migrated for a few reasons: For both the refresh and reset scenarios, if no activation store or activation status information is available, or if the activation store is unreadable, the activation status will not be preserved. The user will have to activate again once the operation completes. In the reset scenario only, if the user has upgraded the edition using the Windows Anytime Upgrade, none of the activation data is migrated. The user will be reset back to the edition included in the OEM image after the reset operation. The user will then have to activate, and go through the Windows Anytime Upgrade process again to get back to the upgraded edition.