Since Windows 8.1 there has always been an option to Reset or Refresh your computer to deal with any issues that might come up. Refreshing your system kept all of your files in place and any Store apps but reset system settings just to clear any conflicts.
The Reset option performed much like a clean install by wiping out not only your personal files but any installed apps and desktop programs. When the Reset process completed you found yourself at the original out of box experience to set Windows up again from scratch.
This was very handy and straight forward in Windows 8/8.1 and past builds of Windows 10.
However, in the latest build of Windows 10, in an apparent effort to make the process more useful and informative Microsoft has introduced a higher level of risk to those users who have more than one hard drive in their system.
After installing build 10130, which was released earlier today, I decided to reset my system for that clean install effect.
As I began that process I was shown a new set of dialogs to get it started and that is where the higher level of risk comes into play.
Here is a step by step set of the screen dialogs:
This is the first time Windows has offered to also remove files from all drives on your system.
The added level of risk is here for a user to potentially select all drives, believing they were doing the right thing to clean up their system, and end up clearing all disk drives in the system.
There is no option to exclude certain drives so it is a one or all choice.
When I clicked on All Drives in the previous dialog this is what I was shown. That Primary (E:) drive is a Windows 7 installation as I have this machine setup in a dual boot of Windows 10/Windows 7.
If I had continued with the option to clear all drives my Windows 7 install would have been wiped out.
This is a standard warning about not being able to revert from the upgrade if you perform a reset as all previous install files and the Windows.old directory from the previous install/upgrade are removed.
Ready to go dialog with an explanation of what will occur during the Reset process.
It always pays off to read and understand dialogs and extreme caution is needed if you opt to perform a reset on your system now - especially if you also happen to have more than one hard drive installed.
Something tells me that someone is going to do this and make the wrong choice though. I am really surprised this was not mentioned in the Windows 10 build 10130 release blog post by Microsoft as it is a significant change to the process.
