Monday, February 3, 2020

When you Reset Windows, Microsoft saves a list of all of the applications removed

The Windows 1909 (November 2019) Windows 10 update didn't like one of my laptops at all. After trying multiple times to upgrade to it, I finally gave up and decided to take the route of choosing "Reset Windows" and keeping all of my data. That worked on the first try, so I was already happy about that. Then I noticed an HTML file on my desktop named "Removed Apps". I opened it, and much to my surprise, it listed ALL of the apps that were deleted by the reset. Happily, I still had all of them in my Downloads folder, so I can easily re-install them. This was a happy surprise, since I was certain that the reinstall part (and figuring out everything that needed to be installed) would be the worst part of the process.