EVERY Windows user needs to do this NOW!

after getting a brand new machine most people see something like this that pops up on their screen not too long after they first logged in and most people ignore it but you shouldn't and here's why this annoying popup is actually very useful what it is is a prompt to create a recovery disc in case your windows has a problem down the road and if you've used windows for any length of time you know that's likely to happen whether your computer boots to a blue screen or for whatever reason you simply cannot log into your computer or in the worst case scenario you have a hard drive failure having this recovery disc handy is going to be the difference of whether you can get your computer up and running yourself or you have to pay for an expensive service call for someone to do it for you but what exactly is a recovery disc that's what we're going to talk about today now before I explain to you why you need to create a recovery disc let me first explain to you what a recovery disc actually is and more importantly why you should always create one as soon as you get a new computer if you've just purchased a new windows-based computer everything on that computer including apps programs the existing setup the layout all of that stuff is possible because of what is known as a factory image this is the default Windows setup that is placed on every new Windows computer now this factory image does vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and usually includes different programs specific to either that brand of machine or that specific manufacturer often times you'll get a free to try version of antivirus like mac or web rout and you'll almost always get a copy of Microsoft Office to try out for yourself Additionally you might see manufacturer specific programs that are designed to work with just that specific brand all these programs are pre-installed with that initial Windows setup and the reason is because that factory image is stored on your hard drive the most important part of creating a recovery disc in my opinion is that your Hardware drivers are pre-loaded onto that Windows installation disc but more on that in a little bit now you may have heard the term Factory recovery before well that's what this disc actually allows you to do in case you run into a problem in Windows that you can't repair or in a worst case scenario you have a failing hard drive you can use this recovery disc to completely restore Windows back to factory settings and believe me when I tell you hard drives do go bad even more modern ssds still fail and you should always assume that at some point your hard drive will fail that's where having a recovery disc is going to be absolutely crucial now back in the day computer manufacturers used to ship out a CD or dvd very similar to this Microsoft Office package with every single computer and if you had a problem you could literally take your CD out pop it in your computer and reinstall Windows and you were fine but in a cost-saving measure instead of creating this and burning CDs and sending them out to every computer the manufacturers decided to load the actual reinstallation software onto the hard dis that comes inside the machine now this factory image usually exists on a a hidden partition on your hard drive which you can easily access using a function key or Windows Advanced troubleshooting from that point you run the recovery you reinstall Windows everything's fine of course that decision probably put millions of dollars back into the company's Pockets at the end of the year which made Executives bonuses a lot fatter and the rest is history so the built-in recovery software while making companies millions of extra dollars a year is a great idea in principle except for one small problem you've got the installation soft sofware on the hard drive that comes with the computer and if you have a Windows problem no big deal but what if the hard drive itself has a problem the recovery partition that you need to reinstall Windows on your drive is on a damaged or failing hard drive that's where having a handy recovery disc comes into play it allows you to completely reinstall Windows just like your machine came from the factory all the apps all the programs and more importantly all the drivers as if you had just bought the machine and even if your hard drive goes bad and you have to replace it you won't lose the Windows installation that you need in order to get back up and running now yes if the machine is relatively new you can download a generic Windows installer disc directly from Microsoft and then install Windows from that and that's a nice tool to have the problem with that is that one that generic Windows installation disc doesn't have the drivers built into it that are specific to your machine it's only going to include a very generic version of Windows and you have to trust that the Windows update process is going to find and install all the drivers for your very specific machine now Windows update has gotten very good at finding and locating drivers but it is not a perfect system and there are times where Windows update cannot find the correct driver for your computer that can be a problem so as an example say you have a wireless connection that you don't use a wired connection you have already previously downloaded this generic Windows installer disc but it doesn't have the built-in drivers that your wireless C needs to get connected to the internet if you just rely on that disc you won't be able to get back online until either you install a separate wireless card to get connected to the internet or connect to a wired connection this is where a recovery disc comes in handy because all the drivers that you need in order to operate your computer successfully are included on that recovery disc it's very specific and targeted to that specific machine and it's going to guarantee that everything just works as soon as you run it believe it or not I see this all the time which is a reason I carry a wireless adapter with me on every client call because sometimes your wireless gets knocked out and if you can't get online you can't download the driver to get back online now as an aside if you find yourself in a situation where you can't locate a driver for your Windows installation uh I highly recommend using driver Maxs I've personally used it for years and I love it so much I actually bought a lifetime license it's 100% free to download 100% free to use use the only limitation with the free version is that you can only get one driver at a time the pro version does allow you to download unlimited drivers in my line of work that makes more sense because I'm usually working on a computer where I have to go find 10 12 15 different drivers but if you're looking for just one specific driver that you cannot find driver Max is absolutely wonderful one of the cool features I like about it is that you can create backups of your existing drivers once you have a working installation so even in a situation where you don't create a recovery disc you could create a driver Max backup of your drivers download a generic Windows installer disc and then install those drivers from that driver Max backup all of it's included with the free version there's lots of other driver download programs out there I'm sure some of them are pretty good I've used this one for years I trust it you should to let's get back to the video now the second reason you should really create this recovery disc is that even though right now your window Windows installer disc might be available by Microsoft eventually your version of Windows is going to go out of support which means Microsoft may or may not continue to host that file which means you may not be able to download that installer disc to get back into Windows if you have a recovery disc you simply plug it in you're back up and running in just a few minutes whether or not it's a software problem or a hardware problem in the case where your machine is out of support and your hard drive dies you literally have no way to get your hard drive I've replaced and windows installed on it because you can't download the software anymore and you don't have a recovery disc that's a bad place to be having a recovery disc solves this problem 100% once you have created that recovery disc you literally have everything that you need if Windows crashes Beyond repair you can pop in the disc reinstall your system like it's brand new you're back in business if your hard drive dies you put a new hard drive in you pop in the recovery disc you run the windows install on the brand new drive and you're back in business if your version of Windows goes out of support no big deal if you have a problem you don't have to rely on a download you pop in the disc reinstall Windows you're back in business I think you can see now how that annoying popup when you first start up your brand new computer is really more important than you actually realize now there's obviously no way I can explain how to run the recovery media creation for every possible manufacturer out there some Brands such as the Dell shown here do pop up this reminder every so often and a lot of people just click click off of it or say don't ask me again and you probably shouldn't do that what I will tell you is that if you don't get one of those specific popups check your start menu so for example if you have a Toshiba the recovery creation software that you need will likely be labeled Toshiba recovery Creator something like that go to your start menu look for Toshiba and then underneath that look for anything related to Media creation backup discs anything along those lines that that's where you need to be run that software put it on a flash drive put that flash drive somewhere safe and I promise you one day when that time comes you're going to be so thankful that you did you just saved yourself a ton of headache down the road so if this video was helpful for you make sure you hit like and leave me a comment down below and let me know how it goes for you now creating a recovery disc is great and it will absolutely help you if and when that time comes but it's also incredibly important to back up your personal files in case your hard drive dies in this video I show you how to make sure that you're doing backups properly and how to perform those backups safely so that you never lose a personal file again

Channel: Ask Your Computer Guy

Views: 76,279

Keywords: recovery disk, can you create a windows 10 recovery disk, recovery drive, windows 10, windows 11, windows tricks

Id: nyZc7iYEceQ

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 24 2023