How to Backup and Restore your Windows 11 (or 10) – without losing your programs and files

In this article, we will learn how to backup and restore your PC, so that you can safely reinstall Windows and do a complete system wipe and refresh – while keeping your programs, profiles, accounts, settings, documents, pictures, music, movies, favorites, and all files.

This kind Windows “wipe and reinstall” is a useful procedure in many cases. It could be a virus infection, a Windows Updates failure, or just Windows 11 / Windows 10 becoming too slow or problem-ridden for use. In these cases, PC repair techs often recommend the “back up and restore” approach: back up the computer, reset Windows, and recover your stuff from backup.

Traditionally, this has been a cumbersome process, and what’s worse – with traditional backups, you only get a partial recovery (user files only). Fortunately, there is a better way. In this article, we’ll see how to do a complete backup and recovery without losing anything!

How to Backup and Restore your Windows PC

The first step in a reinstall like this is to back up everything you’ve got – so that you can restore all of your stuff after you reset your computer. The product we will be using for this is Migration Kit Pro, which allows to easily back up, and most importantly to easily restore programs, settings and files after reinstalling Windows (even if you are switching to a different Windows version!). Alternatively, you can also use any 3rd party backup product that can perform a full system image backup, although that would only allow you to restore files, not programs.

How to backup your Windows so that you can restore programs, settings and files after the reinstall

Before we begin, the most important part is to have a full, complete backup of your computer. This is crucial – without this step, you will lose your programs and data if you wipe the system clean.

Download and run Zinstall Migration Kit Pro on your computer.
Use its 3rd option, “Moving from Machine to Container”.
Select the C: drive on Source selection, and select a place to store your backup container (it’s just a big file) in the Target browse selection.
A good place to store the container is a USB external hard drive. Alternatively, you can use a network drive, another hard drive in the computer etc.
Start the backup process. This should take a long while, and you will see a message confirming that the container has been created successfully.

That’s it – with just a few clicks, your stuff is now safe, and we can proceed to resetting Windows on this computer.

How to Reinstall Windows

Once you have your backup, it’s time to perform the actual Windows wipe and install. There are several ways to do it:

Option 1: If you are on Windows 11 or Windows 10, it is quite easy to reset it, and you don’t even to wipe the drive. Here’s how:

Open Start Menu, and select “Settings”.
In Settings, go to the System tab.
In that menu, go to Recovery.
There, look for “Reset this PC”, and hit Get Started. This will open the Reset wizard.
Select the option to Remove everything.
Follow the prompts until the wizard starts resetting your Windows to its original “out of the box” state.

Once done, proceed to the “Restore your programs, settings and files from backup” section.

Option 2: If you are not on Windows 11 or Windows 10, or the built-in Reset process does not work for some reason, try using the PC Manufacturer’s Factory Reset option. Each PC vendor has different instructions on how to do that. Typically, you need to restart the computer, and then hit one of the function keys (F2, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12) to access the manufacturer factory reset menu. Then, follow the instructions to completely reset the computer to factory state. Once done, proceed to the “Restore your programs, settings and files from backup” section.

Option 3: If all else fails, you can manually install a fresh copy of Windows 11 or Windows 10 on the computer, wiping the previous installation. Here is how to do that:

First, we’ll create a Windows 11 or Windows 10 USB installation drive. Here is how:
On any working computer (you can do that on the one you will be wiping), download Microsoft’s Windows 11 or Windows 10 Media Creation Tool
The tool is available here:
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=691209
Once you download it, plug a blank USB stick into the computer.
Then, tell the tool to create an installation media on that USB stick (DO NOT press “Upgrade Now”, since that would upgrade the computer you are doing this on).
Once the tool is done, take the USB stick and plug it into the computer that we are wiping and reinstalling.
Reboot the computer that we are reinstalling so that it runs from the USB stick and starts the Windows 11 or Windows 10 installation process.
In the installation process, tell the tool to do a Custom install, and then use the wizard to wipe the existing Windows, and reinstall a new, fresh copy of Windows instead.

Once done, proceed to the “Restore your programs, settings and files from backup” section.

How to Restore your programs and files from backup

Once you have your fresh new Windows, it is time to restore your programs, settings and files from the backup you’ve made before.
To do that, run Zinstall Migration Kit Pro and use the 4th option, “Moving from Container to Machine”.
Point it to the backup container you’ve created in the first section, and it will restore everything, including programs, settings and files, to the new Windows.
If you don’t want to restore everything, you can also exclude some programs / folders you don’t want to recover.

That’s it – you have a successfully reset your computer, and kept your programs, accounts and files right they should be!

Ready to backup and restore your Windows computer?

Get Migration Kit Pro here!