Questions about factory reset

[rfalla3]

I have had this Asus gaming laptop since 2016, I am running out of hard drive space and it seems there are a lot of small files that just happened to accumulate on my computer, and possibly many duplicate files. Back then I didn't have much knowledge on how to organize files, so it is quite a mess.

I will put any important files into a portable hard drive, along with any passwords/ have them written down also before doing a reset on the pc.

I am wondering if I can transfer over the windows updates as well, so once I reset the PC I wouldn't have to wait a considerable amount of time for all the updates to install. Would that be possible? I already did a scan with Malwarebytes and it didn't seem to detect anything, a while ago when downloading things somehow other software got downloaded to my computer, along with Yahoo search now being stuck in my internet browser.

Hoping a factory reset will fix everything and just give me a new clean slate on my PC now that I have better organizing skills.

 

[USAFRet]

A "Factory Reset", as in invoking the recovery thing from the manufacturer, will bring the system to as it was when you opened the box in 2016.

You can't just import and overlay the currently installed updates. They'd have to be run all over again. And a reinstall of all the applications you've installed since then.

A better solution is just a clean install of a current Win 10. v1909.
A brand new OS install, without any preinstalled bloatware, and not needing nearly so many 'updates'.
Then, reinstall all your desired applications. And without ending up with something causing Yahoo to hijack your search results.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com