Help with reset

[u/Spidy_Khrish]

I’m having some issues with my laptop and need to completely reset Windows and reinstall it. The problem is that I’ve accumulated a lot of technical setups, custom Windows settings, application configurations, browser settings, histories, saved logins, WSL distributions, multiple Linux environments, development tools, and various other tweaks over the past ~1.5 years.

There are so many things configured on this system that I can’t even remember everything I’ve changed or installed. I don’t necessarily need to preserve everything exactly as-is, but I want to save as much of my current configuration as possible so that after reinstalling Windows, I can either restore the settings or at least have a detailed reference for how everything was configured.

What’s the best way to back up or document all of this before I reset the laptop? Ideally, I want a comprehensive approach that covers Windows settings, installed applications, app configurations, browser data/logins, WSL distributions and configurations, Linux environments, environment variables, PATH changes, developer tools, services, scheduled tasks, network settings, and other customizations I may have forgotten about.

Basically, I want to make sure I don’t reset the laptop and then realize later that I’ve forgotten how I had something configured.

[u/bartoque]

If you make an image level backup of the system as it is now, you can always revisit, for example by restoring it as a VM into a Hypervisor environment.

I did this with Acronis True Image restoring my windows10 laptop into Vmware Workstation. So creating a new vm, having it boot from acronis bootable rescue media iso, restoring from backup into the vm. Then you can boot that vm and login as before.

Only need to have enough diskspace, which could also be running it from a usb connected ssd.

Other hypervisors might do as well (but vmware workstation you run on top of another OS, and not by itself on bare metal like Proxmox), as well as other backup tools like free Veaam Agent for Windows.

But to come back to the actual issue, what is the matter with it the current system that you see a reinstall as the only way out? That must mean things are really, really bad.

[u/JohnnieLouHansen → u/bartoque]

This is a good idea. You will have the entire OS available to boot again as a virtual machine and see "how things were" but still have your computer loaded with a fresh install of Windows.

Backing up and restoring the entire image just restores the problems. You only want to restore the actual data and then find the missing configs/setup as needed.

[u/Spidy_Khrish → u/bartoque]

That's a good idea I got good amount of space I thought of the same will give it a shot and issue is like my laptops display is messed and some heating issue service center told just reset the device for heating issue they will change the thermals and replace the display

[u/bartoque → u/Spidy_Khrish]

I doubt if any OS refresh would address heating issues. So you coulf also wait until that is addressed on physical level before doing anything else.

But having a proper backup should be in place anyways if you value your data.

[u/Empyrealist]

"some issues"? You might end up backing up and restoring whatever that issue is. Be prepared for that.

For custom settings, I recommend running a tweak utility and see what it shows for applied/not applied tweaks. Some will dynamically show whats currently applied, some dont. I dont recall which, so you'll have to check or maybe someone else can speak up. Even screenshots of that could be very helpful.

PATH, tasks, network settings, etc can all be easily dumped from the cmd line.