Best way to go about reinstalling Win10 without loosing programs and games?

[Macboi]

Hello people of the internet!

 

I have been having a huge multitude of problems with my windows 10 install that suggest it has been corrupted in some way despite using sfc and similar things. A few of these problems are:

• random BSODs on bootup with random errors(rarely after boot)
• occasional hard freezes/crashes (to the point that caps lock light doesn't work)
• sometimes it tries to boot, seems to fail and boots again perfectly
• sudden slowdown in boot time, used to take ~20 seconds now takes upwards of a minute
• windows button (the bottom left one) no longer works - have tried all solutions I have seen
• have had problems with everything disheartening suggesting that explorer is not working but a few restarts seemed to fix it

Some things I have tried to fix this:

• sfc /scannow and all similar commands to fix file system
• ran memtest86 (no errors)
• have used blender, furmark, realbench, and many other benchmarks to validate my oc that you see in my signature and all have returned no errors
• tried fixing windows button as stated earlier to no avail
• tried switching which connector on my psu is powering my SSD
• have run full malwarebytes, adwcleaner and windows defender scans of my whole system with nothing bad returned
• tried using windows restore but it fails

If you have any ideas on what else I can do before going all in and reinstalling windows, then fire away... but for now I need advice on how I should manage reinstalling windows 10 when I have a large amount of games, Skyrim SE mods, and many programs installed on my computer.  I have a very slow internet connection, but if necessary I could re-download all of the games, I am just concerned on whether I would loose progress, especially with Skyrim SE because of all the nexus mods that I would need.

 

Is there any way that I can reinstall windows and somehow keep all of this?  If I reset my pc and use keep files option will it also keep my installed programs?

 

Any help that you can offer would be GREATLY appreciated as I am very concerned about what I should do.  This windows install is over 1.5 years in the making and is highly tuned to my liking; I would hate to have to start it all over from scratch...

 

Also before anyone says install Linux, I'm going to do that as soon as I can afford another HDD to run it off of (I don't want to partition my SSD).

[Mr.McMister]

You can use dism to repair your windows 10 image.

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

However this will only repair the core of windows itself by comparing it to an online image hosted by microsoft. It's more likely though that the issues are down to drivers and third party services running in the background. Your best bet is to refresh your pc while keeping your data, but you will have to reinstall most of your software,

https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/help/17085/windows-8-restore-refresh-reset-pc

[m0k]

so the games are easy to save - ex on steam / origin etc.

In the past, in order to avoid having to re-download and install all my games i just copy paste the game's installation folder to another drive

and then you reinstall windows - and just paste the old game folder back into its general install location - upon loading up steam, it will find the games files and start up with no issues

In my case i had it even easier. My OS is on a SSD, and all my game files and folders were on a separate HDD

So when i had to reinstall windows 10 i woulc just disconnect my HDD to avoid losing my content.

 

As for the programs and apps - unfortunately i would PERSONALLY  recommend letting those go - and just re-install after the fresh OS installation. (just to save time later in case your issues are not resolived)

Its good practice to start from scratch because there could be conflicting programs / reg entries / drivers / runtimes  that might be causing your BSOD and OS issues

[Enderman]

No.

A clean install means programs need to be reinstalled.

Depending on the game, sometimes there is an entire game folder that can be copied to a new system without losing anything.

For example with steam you can just have games on a separate drive and if you reinstall windows you just need to tell steam where to find your games.

For some games there are files in other places on your drive that you need to look for and save.

Just look up "how to move X game to another system" or something like that.

[Macboi]

On 3/4/2018 at 7:57 PM, mok said:

so the games are easy to save - ex on steam / origin etc.

In the past, in order to avoid having to re-download and install all my games i just copy paste the game's installation folder to another drive

and then you reinstall windows - and just paste the old game folder back into its general install location - upon loading up steam, it will find the games files and start up with no issues

In my case i had it even easier. My OS is on a SSD, and all my game files and folders were on a separate HDD

So when i had to reinstall windows 10 i woulc just disconnect my HDD to avoid losing my content.

 

As for the programs and apps - unfortunately i would PERSONALLY  recommend letting those go - and just re-install after the fresh OS installation. (just to save time later in case your issues are not resolived)

Its good practice to start from scratch because there could be conflicting programs / reg entries / drivers / runtimes  that might be causing your BSOD and OS issues

Thank you very much for the quick response, I should be able to do the thing with the games as 3/4 of them or so are installed on my secondary drive.  Same thing with all of my windows libraries, they are just redirection to my D drive.

 

That sucks program wise as I have over 100 installed, but I suppose that is a good way to clean them out...

 

Do you know whether I should just use the reset option in settings or do a complete clean install from usb?

 

On 3/4/2018 at 8:03 PM, Enderman said:

No.

A clean install means programs need to be reinstalled.

Depending on the game, sometimes there is an entire game folder that can be copied to a new system without losing anything.

For example with steam you can just have games on a separate drive and if you reinstall windows you just need to tell steam where to find your games.

For some games there are files in other places on your drive that you need to look for and save.

Just look up "how to move X game to another system" or something like that.

Thank you, any idea if this works with the nexus mods folder?

[Enderman]

Just now, Macboi said:

Thank you, any idea if this works with the nexus mods folder?

No, I've never played that game you will have to research google.

[Macboi]

Just now, Enderman said:

No, I've never played that game you will have to research google.

No problem, I was just curious if you did. 

 

Thank you for your assistance.

[m0k]

1 hour ago, Macboi said:

Do you know whether I should just use the reset option in settings or do a complete clean install from usb?

I personally have used the Windows Reset options to wipe all data - and it has been just fine for me.

I dont actually own a physical win10 key - it was a free upgrade a while ago so i dont know how to activate win10 from a iso reinstallation (i just never tried it on my pc)

 

someone could chime in and let me know if its tied to my hardware somehow or not

On my dell laptop it was tied to my hardware, but i dont know if it works the same on custom pc's as it does on prebuilts and OEMs

[johnukguy]

On 3/4/2018 at 9:02 PM, mok said:

I personally have used the Windows Reset options to wipe all data - and it has been just fine for me.

I dont actually own a physical win10 key - it was a free upgrade a while ago so i dont know how to activate win10 from a iso reinstallation (i just never tried it on my pc)

 

someone could chime in and let me know if its tied to my hardware somehow or not

On my dell laptop it was tied to my hardware, but i dont know if it works the same on custom pc's as it does on prebuilts and OEMs

Your Windows 10 should now be associated with your Microsoft account and therefore you can reinstall, do a clean install or whatever and still be able to activate it, even on a new machine.

[Macboi]

On 3/4/2018 at 11:02 PM, mok said:

I personally have used the Windows Reset options to wipe all data - and it has been just fine for me.

I dont actually own a physical win10 key - it was a free upgrade a while ago so i dont know how to activate win10 from a iso reinstallation (i just never tried it on my pc)

 

someone could chime in and let me know if its tied to my hardware somehow or not

On my dell laptop it was tied to my hardware, but i dont know if it works the same on custom pc's as it does on prebuilts and OEMs

I have had many computers where I've extracted the windows key as a precaution, wiped the HDD and reinstalled windows, and windows was already activated w/o having to enter the key... pretty sure it's linked into the bios.  Interestingly enough I've even had this happen installing win10 on computers that were running win7 or even win8 after upgrade period.

 

So yes, it is tied to your hardware, but you should extract the key as a precautionary before a complete reinstall just to be safe.

 

Windows keys are weird...

[m0k]

4 hours ago, johnukguy said:

Your Windows 10 should now be associated with your Microsoft account and therefore you can reinstall, do a clean install or whatever and still be able to activate it, even on a new machine.

I have never signed into windows with any of my emails accounts - is that the only way?

4 hours ago, Macboi said:

So yes, it is tied to your hardware, but you should extract the key as a precautionary before a complete reinstall just to be safe.

Did you have to sign into windows with a microsoft account as well? or did you ONLY extract the keys - and how did you extract the key in win10?

[johnukguy]

On 3/13/2018 at 11:34 PM, mok said:

I have never signed into windows with any of my emails accounts - is that the only way?

Did you have to sign into windows with a microsoft account as well? or did you ONLY extract the keys - and how did you extract the key in win10?

If you haven't signed in with a Microsoft account, you can link them fairly easily:

https://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-10/link-windows-product-key-microsoft-account/

[mrcharizard]

I think you should really reinstall all your programs. You can use ninite if you're really lazy to install each by hand.

 

Here's what I usually do to back up my settings before reinstalling windows:

If you have part of your steam library on your system drive, migrate it to a different drive(you can just copy steam/steamapps/common to a different drive)

 

Take a screenshot of all the programs you installed, either your desktop icons or in your control panel.

 

Check the following folders and backup any folder related to programs/games you use frequently/tweaked extensively/don't want to set up again:

     users\(username)\documents (usually your game save files are here, just in case you have a game with no cloud save)

     users\(username)\appdata\local

     users\(username)\appdata\locallow

     users\(username)\appdata\roaming (for me the most important folder here is my foobar settings)

     Programdata

 

Some further files you might consider backing up:

    your desktop

    your desktop backgrounds

    users\(username)\downloads(or music or pictures)

    any cloud storage folder you don't want wasting time rescynced

 

If you're really hardcore you can also screenshot stuff like chrome flags and services.msc....I personally don't see the point in doing so though....

 

You might also wanna make sure you remember all your login passwords.

 

Hopefully this helps you not miss some important files

[Macboi]

5 hours ago, mrcharizard said:

I think you should really reinstall all your programs. You can use ninite if you're really lazy to install each by hand.

 

Here's what I usually do to back up my settings before reinstalling windows:

If you have part of your steam library on your system drive, migrate it to a different drive(you can just copy steam/steamapps/common to a different drive)

 

Take a screenshot of all the programs you installed, either your desktop icons or in your control panel.

 

Check the following folders and backup any folder related to programs/games you use frequently/tweaked extensively/don't want to set up again:

     users\(username)\documents (usually your game save files are here, just in case you have a game with no cloud save)

     users\(username)\appdata\local

     users\(username)\appdata\locallow

     users\(username)\appdata\roaming (for me the most important folder here is my foobar settings)

     Programdata

 

Some further files you might consider backing up:

    your desktop

    your desktop backgrounds

    users\(username)\downloads(or music or pictures)

    any cloud storage folder you don't want wasting time rescynced

 

If you're really hardcore you can also screenshot stuff like chrome flags and services.msc....I personally don't see the point in doing so though....

 

You might also wanna make sure you remember all your login passwords.

 

Hopefully this helps you not miss some important files

Thank you very much for the help!  Many steam games install other programs (Microsoft packages, battleye, directX stuff, etc.) when you install the game itself.  Do you know if this will cause any issues being that I will only backup the steam games folder?

[mrcharizard]

On 3/16/2018 at 11:44 PM, Macboi said:

Thank you very much for the help!  Many steam games install other programs (Microsoft packages, battleye, directX stuff, etc.) when you install the game itself.  Do you know if this will cause any issues being that I will only backup the steam games folder?

Steam will perform a "first time setup" when you try to start the game, which installs all the necessary components.

[Macboi]

4 hours ago, mrcharizard said:

Steam will perform a "first time setup" when you try to start the game, which installs all the necessary components.

Thank you very much.