Resetting W10 and SP3

[stsalkit]

I have a feeling that something is not quite right with the upgrade... Cortana is not working "properly", microphone is playing up, Edge crushes from time to time etc. I have an itch to do a complete reset (Settings / Update and Security / Recovery / Reset this PC).
Do you see any drawbacks / dangers to this? Have you done it successfully? Any benefits you saw if you've done it?

 

[hughlle]

I have a feeling that something is not quite right with the upgrade... Cortana is not working "properly", microphone is playing up, Edge crushes from time to time etc. I have an itch to do a complete reset (Settings / Update and Security / Recovery / Reset this PC).
Do you see any drawbacks / dangers to this? Have you done it successfully? Any benefits you saw if you've done it?

Many users including myself have experienced a boot error following a reset. My S3 ended up reverting itself back to pre-reset giving me a failed to reset message upon logging in. You might want to hold off.

As to cortana, i doubt it will fix it. there seems to be issues with the mircophone for many. On both my S3 and SP3 it tells me that my microphones are not designed for cortana and it may not work. A work around that has worked for some is to uninstall the audio drivers from device manager and then restart and let windows update sort that out again.

 

[GreyFox7]

Not sure about Reset... did it update the Recovery Partition??? One person reported a Reset on a Pro took him back to 8.0. If it's really necessary it might be better to use the Media Creation Tool and reinstall from USB.

On the Laptop I upgraded there is a *new* 462MB Recovery Partition but it's completely empty
as Disk Management shows it has 462MB free. not sure what we'd do with 462MB anyway as that's not going to hold a Win10 sized reinstall source. The USB I created has 3.2 GB on it for Win10.

The Original 10GB Recovery Partition on this Lenovo laptop was not updated, and still has the FactoryRecovery bits on it.

 

[benjitek]

I'm not sure if the SP3 and SP2 are the same in this regard, but I had been using the beta and then did a total system reset and my SP2 reverted to Windows 8.1, then I performed an upgrade to get the free upgrade outside of the Insider beta method, opting to keep no files or settings. After that, I tried the system reset and again reverted to Windows 8.1.

Then I made a bootable Windows 10 Installation USB flash drive and did a clean install. I deleted all existing partitions and when I selected 'create new partition' it automatically created the pre-existing recovery partition, though I'm assuming this time it stores Windows 10 recovery stuff. Between all those upgrades, figuring out the bootable USB drive creation (the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool doesn't work), I'm not up for trying another system reset to find out ;-)

The clean-install itself worked out well, wouldn't accept my Product-ID -- but all the screens requesting it had a 'skip' option. Once it connected to the the internet, it activated on it's own without needing my Product-ID.

Lots of users at the Microsoft Support forums for W10 are posting about issues creating a bootable W10 USB drive using the Microsoft tool -- I used a solution provided by a user and it worked the 1st attempt, after a couple days of trying unsuccessfully with the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool:

Daniel Byrne replied on July 31, 2015

I found a solution.

1. Use Windows Media Creation Tool to download an ISO of Windows 10.

2. To create a bootable USB, use Rufus to create a bootable USB with the windows 10 ISO.

3. Follow this tutorial for more in depth instructions:

http://www.techverse.net/how-to-create-bootable-usb-flash-drive-install-windows-8-1/

This was my solution, hope it helps!

(The tutorial is for 8.1 but effectively the same).

 

[ctitanic]

Uninstalling the driver fixed Cortana's issue for me.

 

[fletch33]

i did the upgrade and had few issues like display adapter port not working and some odd resolution issues and a tad of overall lack luster performance.

i did a system wipe of everything then let it update again without touching it until it was back on 10 and now its smooth and everything works as expected.

dont know what made it different but glad i did it

 

[malberttoo]

Moved to new Win10 on SP3 forum...

 

[stsalkit]

i did the upgrade and had few issues like display adapter port not working and some odd resolution issues and a tad of overall lack luster performance.

i did a system wipe of everything then let it update again without touching it until it was back on 10 and now its smooth and everything works as expected.

dont know what made it different but glad i did it

How did you do it? - can you detail the steps please?

 

[Sven]

i did the upgrade and had few issues like display adapter port not working and some odd resolution issues and a tad of overall lack luster performance.

i did a system wipe of everything then let it update again without touching it until it was back on 10 and now its smooth and everything works as expected.

dont know what made it different but glad i did it

So basically reverted to clean 8.1 image then --> 10 upgrade over that ?

I'm noticing some graphical glitches, and resume from standby issues (type cover sometimes refuses to resume the surface like it did on 8.1 if a key or touchpad is clicked).

Wish MS had given us a Surface Pro 3 recovery image like the 8.1 version. Seems like an oversight that one has to do this with workarounds or manual driver downloads.

 

[fletch33]

So basically reverted to clean 8.1 image then --> 10 upgrade over that ?

I'm noticing some graphical glitches, and resume from standby issues (type cover sometimes refuses to resume the surface like it did on 8.1 if a key or touchpad is clicked).

Wish MS had given us a Surface Pro 3 recovery image like the 8.1 version. Seems like an oversight that one has to do this with workarounds or manual driver downloads.

a clean 10 image will arrive at some point.

so yes i used the system wipe/restore which put it back to 8.1 then i did nothing but the updates until i was on 10 then installed my stuff back and runs great.

 

[leeshor]

A clean image, as clean as it can get, has been available since Wednesday - here https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

 

[cemian]

How did you do it? - can you detail the steps please?

Also we need the Windows Product Key embedded inside the BIOS..I haven't looked into this as of yet but are we able to get this key when we use the media creation tool and create our win10 install media? I have tried it on another system with some key recovery utilities but the product key returned did not work.