Refresh & reset function in Windows 10

[Chung Wei Leong]

I'm curios about, when the final version of windows 10 release, is it will create a recovery partition after I upgraded from windows 8.1? if yes, will it replace the OEM recovery partition that came with the laptop? In case I want to do a refresh or reset in future, because previously my laptop is update to win8.1 from win8, and every time I do a refresh or reset, it will roll all the back to the win8 instead of win8.1.

 

[David Feifer]

That is because with these builds under c:\RecoveryImage you will find a file named DONOTREPLACE.txt with the text =Upgrade will not replace the on-disk recovery image if this file is present. Do not delete or modify this file.

This is so that if you installed 10 on a system that had compatibility issues you could actually roll back to what you had. I presume that if you were to delete this file the recoveryimage folder would not actually be there but in the drive partition on upgrade.

 

[Chung Wei Leong]

so which mean I will only roll back to the Windows 8 instead of the Windows 10 right... Now my question is Windows 10 is free for upgrade for win 7,8,8.1 within one year after release, what if I have to do refresh or reset for fix some issue, in my case I will be roll back to the win 8, but can I still upgrade to win 10 that is already 1 year later? If yes, is it recognize my device via my Microsoft account or something?

 

[bmetelsky]

No. You should download and burn the final release version of Windows 10 to a DVD so that if you need to reinstall you will be able to. Alternatively, you could set up your computer with the release version of Windows 10, get everything the way you want it, then use the built in imaging software to make an exact copy of what's on your hard drive.

 

[David Feifer]

Also I believe the donotreplace.txt file is strictly for the betas and previews. Once the core release is here that should no longer be in, the upgrade would replace the restore partition and if you did a refresh It would just refresh to 10 release.

 

[Chung Wei Leong]

So I think I need to get the answer after the final release.
I also face a case similar to this before, that before the final of 8.1 there was a consumer preview for public, but after upgraded to final version the OEM partition will be replace.

Here is the summary that what I said:
1) 8 -> 8.1 final result: OEM partition still the same
2) 8 -> 8.1 consumer preview -> 8.1 final result: OEM partition will be replaced

** in this case, it is the Windows RT version, but I believe it same as Windows 8