How to restore Windows 10 to recover data or settings

One neat thing about Windows 10 is the ability to tweak and customize it to fit your personality and needs. One bad thing about Windows 10 is the ability to tweak and customize it to fir your personality and needs. On one hand customization is a good thing and on the other hand it isn’t. If you go too far or do something wrong it can affect how your computer works and even stop it working properly at all.

We here at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey see this a lot. A customization that goes wrong, an app that tweaks the desktop or adds new themes that stops Windows working or a third party program that promises much and delivers trouble. All things we can undo for you but you can recover a lot yourself with Windows Restore.

Windows Restore

Windows Restore has been part of Windows for years now and once set up, will keep a recent image of all your settings. If something goes wrong with your computer and you cannot fix it, you can restore a previous version of your operating system to get things back to normal.

For Windows Restore to work, you first need to set it up. If you haven’t done it already, now is the perfect time to do that.

1. Type ‘restore’ into the Windows Search box and select System Restore.
2. Select Create to create a restore point of your current setup.
3. Name your restore point and select Restore.

The process will take a few minutes but you should see a message that says ‘The restore point was created successfully’.

When you need to use Windows Restore, you can do this:

1. Type ‘restore’ into the Windows Search box and select System Restore.
2. Select your restore point from the list and select Next.
3. Select Finish to perform the restore.

Depending on your computer, this could take a minute or up to ten minutes. Either way, once complete, your computer will be returned to how it was when you created the restore point.

Windows Restore from Safe Mode

If Windows 10 really has broken, you may need to enter Safe Mode to perform the restoration.

1. Reboot your computer and hit F8 when the keyboard lights come on.
2. Select Safe Mode with Command Prompt from the black screen.
3. Type ‘rstrui.exe’ into the command line box when it appears and hit Enter.
4. Select a restore point and let Windows do its thing.

If you have only a single restore point, you won’t have to select one, the system will do it for you and begin restoring Windows to how it was. Once complete, your computer will reboot into Windows and everything should be working fine as it was.

If you have any issues with Windows Restore the computer repair guys at Dave’s Computers in New Jersey can help. Bring your computer to our store and we will see what we can do!