Migration Expert Zone

Recently, I discovered that a shiny new browser had managed to sneak onto my laptop.  Having no desire to keep it on my machine, I proceeded to remove it, using the procedure dictated by IT best practices. Of course, this resulted in a minor disaster that left my PC with odd new habits. 

After a few hours of trying to figure out what went wrong, I did that magical assessment we all sometimes do to determine whether it was really worth it to back everything up and re-install Windows completely to get to a “known good state.”

It wasn’t so much the backup and restore of the data.  I’ve got pretty good habits about keeping everything in one portable container. And it wasn’t at all about doing a Windows reinstall.  With an SSD in my laptop, everything moves pretty quickly. 

It was the apps.  I’ll admit it.  I’m an apps hound and have ridiculously too many on my machine.  But I do use them all, and the idea of spending the next several weeks re-installing them just didn’t really appeal to me very much.

I’m sure that many of you have shared this experience.  Depending on your environment, there has just been no good way to completely reinstall Windows without having to back up and restore the data, and reinstall all the apps. If you work in an environment that actually manages its images well, the pain might be halved.  If your PC’s manufacturer provides a “hidden partition” from which Windows can be readily restored, that can also help reduce the pain. 

If you’re using VDI, well, you’re probably fine.

Desmond Lee, a program manager on the Fundamentals team at Microsoft, recently published a blog on MSDN which demonstrates that someone at Microsoft has indeed been listening, and he details what “reset” and “restore” are probably going to look like in Windows 8. Even his list of the team’s goals is encouraging:

• Provide a consistent experience to get the software on any Windows 8 PC back to a good and predictable state.
• Streamline the process so that getting a PC back to a good state with all the things customers care about can be done quickly instead of taking up the whole day.
• Make sure that customers don’t lose their data in the process.
• Provide a fully customizable approach for technical enthusiasts to do things their own way.

Likening the process to restoring a smartphone or resetting a router, Lee describes the planned standard as making restoration a “pushbutton-simple” operation.  Get back to a “clean condition” while keeping the things you value.  He describes two options:

• Reset your PC – Remove all personal data, apps, and settings from the PC, then reinstall Windows.  The PC boots into the “Windows Recovery Environment,” erases and formats the drive completely, installs a new, fresh copy of Windows, and restarts.  They even provide an advanced wipe function that lays down random patterns on the platter to ensure irrecoverable erasure.
• Refresh your PC – Keep all personal data, Metro-style apps, and important settings from the PC, and reinstall Windows.  The PC boots directly into Windows RE, sets all your data, settings, and Metro-style apps aside elsewhere on the drive, installs a fresh copy of Windows, restores everything, and restarts into the new Windows environment.

Non-Metro apps can be re-installed separately, and some settings are NOT preserved, like file type associations, and display and firewall settings.  This will need fine-tuning.

Obviously it’s very early in the development process for Windows 8, but it is encouraging and refreshing to see Microsoft tackling this most difficult set of problems this early.  They’re even working on a customizable “get it back to where you want it” set of tools. 

It will be interesting to see what they all look like in the beta, and whether they will find their way back to Windows 7 before 8 is released.

Stay tuned.