Reload Win 10 while preserving currently installed apps & data
A customer of mine has a malware infested Windows 10 OS and would like me to reload the Win 10 OS so that all applications and data that are currently installed will remain in place.
How can this be done?
How can this be done?
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There are application movers around (you would buy them), but those don't work 100% reliably. Best would be to resort to your latest image backup. If you don't have one, please reload windows (clean installation) and consider to start using image backups.
With a malware infection, there is no guarantee that his current apps and data are actually in place NOW. They could be corrupted, modified, encrypted, and so on. Leaving behind that data could result in re-activating the malware and then you're back to square one.
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Are these different machines to the two malware infected Windows 10 machines in your most recent 4 questions?
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These are different machines than the ones in my 4 most recent questions.
The answer, though, is about the same. Seriously infected = backup, format, and reinstall Windows.
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Thanks and good luck with reloading the OS.
This will take you to the WIndows Settings page where you will be able to reset the PC. You can choose to keep your files, or delete everything. Note that only pre-installed applications or applications installed from the Windows Store will be re-installed during this process. There will be a list of removed applications on the desktop when the process completes, for any application that is not automatically re-installed.
There is no way to do what you are asking. However, you can run various antivirus/anti-malware tools to try to clean the system completely without re-installing the OS. Sometimes, it is better to start from scratch if a virus infection is a particularly nasty strain.