Windows 10 recovery

I am a fan of Windows 10. I don't like everything about it, in particular, the forced updates. However, there are some things I really like a lot, and think are much improved.

The first thing I like is Cortana. While I never use the oral interface, the search thru Cortana has been great. Particularly when I'm looking for things that have been removed from the Start menu. Control Panel and Remote Desktop are 2 things I use all the time and Cortana brings them up after typing a few letters.

The next thing is the recovery option. Windows 10 has changed in that you can't easily bring up 'Safe Mode' anymore. That was always a handy tool. Lately though I have worked on a few computers where Windows 10 has been corrupted. In these cases, it seems power issues were involved, in one case by an electrical storm. Our whether lately has provided some great storm watching opportunities on the porch. 

Windows will try and recover from a problem, and if it fails automatically, you can try some advanced options. There is an option for Startup Repair, if that is the problem. I have not had much success with that one. Restoring from a restore point is a good one, so make sure you are creating restore points. Restore points were great to use with Windows 7 as well. Windows 10 offers another option, and that is to restore Windows itself. The restore of Windows offers a choice of keeping your files or not. The restore will remove any non-original programs added. Usually, it's not too difficult to re-install programs, and it gives you a list of programs it removes, so that's helpful too. The restore also is a nice refresh of the system, so it will likely run better afterward as well. Not for the faint hearted, I do worry a bit when I run it, however it's worked great the times I have. When I simply cannot get a computer to start up with the repair or the restore points, then a refresh, saving the files, has been a great answer.

By the way, if you aren't making backups of your data, you should. I have a couple of external hard drives if you need one.