In Windows 10, by reinstall, you mean from the system without destroying data? I had to do that right after I got my Surface when the camera wouldn’t work. It was simple. But is it thorough enough?
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In Windows 10, by reinstall, you mean from the system without destroying data? I had to do that right after I got my Surface when the camera wouldn’t work. It was simple. But is it thorough enough? As with so many other things, "it depends". If the instability or corruption was in the Windows installation, or the application installations, then reinstalling Windows from scratch, reinstalling your applications, and restoring your data should bring good behavior back. But if the badness was in your own data, profiles, etc.
I regularly make two kinds of backups of my Windows machines:
- A full complete disk image, that can be restored to a new (bare), or old but reformatted, disk drive, resulting in a perfect clone of the prior machines. This is for disaster recovery purposes. It allows me to restore a failed machine to prior state in at most a few hours. I typically use Acronis True Image.
- A backup of all my data (profiles, document files, etc.).
In addition, I maintain multiple copies of all installation media for all applications I have paid licenses for, along with copies of the installation codes/keys. This in combination with the data backup allows me to reconstruct a useful new machine -- one based on a fresh installation of Windows and re-installation of all applications -- in about a half a day. It's not a clone, but it is essentially a copy of the old machine EXCEPT that Windows and the applications have been installed fresh.
By "reinstall" I mean that latter process. Not the "disk image" cloning done with Acronis.