Hi Guys, on my wife's laptop is Windows 10 installed everything worked fine for a week, after a week time now when she turns her Laptop on, windows doesn't log in at al. hangs at Welcome, i've tried the repair options, reboot, refresh no-one if those options works. i can't move back to Windows 8.1 because already removed Windows.old is there is a way to reinstall windows without losing the files ? if i try to install windows 8.1 over Windows 10 without formatting the disk, would i lose the profile files , documents and pictures ? thank you
No. unless you explicitly format the disk windows, program files, users and so on will be moved in a folder named windows.old Win 8 will start virgin, just like on a formatted disk, then you can recover your data from windows.old Also many settings can be recovered relatively easily, for the applications that stores the config files inside a folder (notably most of the browsers, download managers, bit torrent clients and so on) Just move or copy the folders from the old to the new app data folder and from the old to the new /programdata
Than you for your answer, i've opens the laptop and connected the HDD to a Sata reader, to copy the files, however the HDD is GPT Protective partition, any suggestions how to get the data off that disk before formatting it ?
I think reinstall Windows 8 will keep the files stored on D drive, E drive and etc, but erase the files on C drive. So the question can be where do you store the profile files , documents and pictures.
"think" doesn't help here. You "know" or you "don't know". As I wrote earlier, unless you format the drive all the files are keept.