If it was my PC @razz, I'd be agreeing with @hazelnut, I'd be taking the time to get my backups in order, my imaging process sorted and doing a reinstall.
Especially if you haven't done one, a reinstall that is, in a while (maybe never!) - it's a great way to trim the unused software and get Windows back to its top state.
The whole exercise is a great experience to have under your belt as PC's always tend to give you the most grief when you can least afford them to.
But you are right to 'put it off', it is a daunting task. It's actually a whole lot easier than you may think; each step is quite painless, just watching the bouncing ball, there just happens to be a lot of little steps and people only see the whole picture instead of breaking it down into its component parts.
But to answer your question, if you create a new account it will not adopt all your old account settings; as far as Windows is concerned, it's a new, virgin user and will need setting up accordingly.
User-level stuff like wallpaper, screensaver, power management, Doc folder contents, email account etc will need setting up. And you can copy/paste all your personal data out of the old user folders.
System-level stuff like, AV software, Office, Win Updates etc will be unaffected.
One way to figure out if it's only your user profile is to follow what mta wrote above.
I once had a corrupt user profile immediately after uninstalling some software which I suspect was probably the user's registry NTUSER.dat file many years before I ever got into disk imaging, and creating a new account and then copying+pasting over the files from the corrupt profile to the new one was easy (I literally copied everything from the corrupt profile to the new one - minus the user's registry NTUSER.dat). Although it's always a pain to reconfigure stuff exactly how you have Windows Explorer configured, etc., the looks and how the layout was configured is difficult to remember, which is why taking some screenshots of how you have stuff is very time-saving and screenshots are also time-saving if you decide to format or restore the system.
If it was my PC @razz, I'd be agreeing with @hazelnut, I'd be taking the time to get my backups in order, my imaging process sorted and doing a reinstall.
Especially if you haven't done one, a reinstall that is, in a while (maybe never!) - it's a great way to trim the unused software and get Windows back to its top state.
The whole exercise is a great experience to have under your belt as PC's always tend to give you the most grief when you can least afford them to.
I agree it would be a great experience to have under my belt because I have never done a reinstall of Windows (our computer guru did it for us a couple of times). So when I'm up to it, I'll probably give it a go.
mta, within this topic you once wrote: "also don't forget Advanced Recovery Mode in Win10, you can tell it to Reset your PC keeping personal files or starting from scratch". If I decide to reinstall, is this the best way to do it? Also, should I select the keeping of personal files or start from scratch (assuming I have my stuff backed up)?
it's always a pain to reconfigure stuff exactly how you have Windows Explorer configured, etc., the looks and how the layout was configured is difficult to remember, which is why taking some screenshots of how you have stuff is very time-saving and screenshots are also time-saving if you decide to format or restore the system.
I did exactly that last night, took a bunch of screen shots. I figured it would come in handy!
BTW, by following instructions as per Windows Ten Forum, I checked my system integrity with "sfc / scannow" and I ran the "DISM /Cleanup-Image" tool, both in an elevated Command Prompt. Both had clean results.
mta, within this topic you once wrote: "also don't forget Advanced Recovery Mode in Win10, you can tell it to Reset your PC keeping personal files or starting from scratch". If I decide to reinstall, is this the best way to do it? Also, should I select the keeping of personal files or start from scratch (assuming I have my stuff backed up)?
Yes, ARM would be your best way.
Sorry, I'm still old school and use the DVD or USB stick where I have my Windows installation files on.
I forget WIn10 can do it from ARM now.
Personally, when you use ARM I'd do the 'reset not keeping files' as I'd want to start from a clean as slate as possible - that is after all the reasoning behind the Windows reinstall in the first place.
This is a little bit off topic so please forgive me. What are you guys doing? This thread reads almost exactly like a Win95, or better yet WinME help-me post. I understand the basic jists of the comments, but it's like we're all still in 1995. I dabbled around with Partition Magic in 2002. I didn't know crap but I managed to make it work for a year or so. And I don't know doo-doo about deep computer stuff. You guys DO and have understood it longer than I ever have. And now it's 2017. And you STILL can't make heads or tails about certain PC things. And that's my big Corona rant. It sits there like the big pile of dog doo that it is. It stinks, it's squishy between your toes, and there's not a water fountain close enough to wash it off fast enough.
Before you blame me, Andavari told me to post this or he would beat me up. So there.
I'm glad this got posted, thanks to all. Including Corona and his enigmatic rant.
What I got from it is how to get win 10 back on its feet when necessary, and where to go for help. Very helpful to me, since i rarely use win 10.
Razz, I must join the camp who advocate doing a reinstall. Just get your stuff copied somewhere safe and do it. Maybe take a sedative first. Then get your stuff put back and make an image and TRY the image. It's intimidating, I can never get rid of the idea that something will surely go wrong.
But when it goes right you get that feeling of WOO HOO, that actually worked.
Sorry but I've either completely missed some sort of implied sarcasm or something that you meant to be light-hearted has been lost in translation.
I thought we all have been (me definitely) helping out @razz with his legitimate issue.
If the advice from all of us has varied then that is the very nature of PERSONAL Computing isn't it.
Not only is there seldom only one way to skin the cat, but everyone has their own bias and experience, and with opinions being like armpits, we all think everyone else's stinks.
But as I said, maybe I missed the point of your rant completely.
I thought we all have been (me definitely) helping out @razz with his legitimate issue.
If the advice from all of us has varied
-- Yes! All the help from everyone involved was GREATLY appreciated.
-- I didn't really think the advice on here varied much. For one thing, all of you agree that I should now do a reinstall. AND now, I finally agree. Thanks to all.
I agree to do the reinstall this time, next time you need to have your disk imaging in proper order to save your time. While a fresh start with Windows will undoubtedly fix all issues that still doesn't make it not suck.
I agree to do the reinstall this time, next time you need to have your disk imaging in proper order to save your time. While a fresh start with Windows will undoubtedly fix all issues that still doesn't make it not suck.
Just to let you know, the reinstall went well. It was highly recommended on the Windows Ten Forum that I I download The Media Creation Tool and then download Windows 10 to a new USB. Doing the reinstall this way I was able to save all my apps. Hopefully now all will be fine in Dell Laptop land.
Now comes the absolute chore of reinstalling all of your user software and configuring the system the way you like it. That takes significantly longer than installing Windows.
