How to make full use of Windows 8 Recovery features

You might know that Microsoft Windows 8 and above versions has impressive recovery features which you can use to get your operating system back on track if something goes wrong. These features include the familiar face of System Restore and the all new  Refresh and Reset options. Additionally, if your PC has come with a recovery partition, you can save space by creating a recovery drive in the form of a USB flash drive and deleting the recovery partition.

To find these features

Go to Charms bar (Win+C)
Click Settings
Click Change PC settings
Click Update and Recovery
Click Recovery and you will find Refresh and Reset options as below screen

Update and Recovery

If you want to delete everything and re-install windows you can do so from by using the Reset option

But, if you only need to repair your Windows installation and keep all your data, Refresh should be your choice. You will have to keep in mind that the Refresh option will remove all your Desktop applications and will leave you a list of applications removed during the Refresh process.

However, their's a neat trick that you can use to Refresh your OS while keeping all your software applications. 

Steps

1. Go to Start screen, type cmd, right click on Command Prompt and click "Run     as administrator"

2. Type the below command and press Enter
    recimg -CreateImage drive:\folder (don't forget to replace "drive:\folder"     with an actual location on your hard drive

Doing this not only create a recovery image (CustomRefresh.wim) on the given location, it also registers that image as the default and will be used when you Refresh your OS. 

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