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I have an MSI GT70 2PC Dominator gaming notebook which I bought about a year ago with Windows 8.1 and PowerDVD 10 installed. When I accidentally uninstalled PowerDVD because I thought it was a trial version, I could recover from a hidden partition to the default installation of my laptop through the reboot troubleshooting menu (the blue menu that appears if you reboot in a certain way).
I have since updated to Windows 10. I'm happy with Windows 10, but I'm preparing for a 3 week vacation in 2 months and I'm considering starting from a pretty blank slate: Windows 10 + the software that came with the default install (so I don't lose PowerDVD 10 which I need to properly watch blurays). I was hoping to use the recovery partition for that, but obviously if this is still Windows 8.1, that would cost me another half a day to update to Windows 10 again. On the other hand, if the recovery partition has been updated to a blank windows 10 without the default installed software, that would also be costly since I'd no longer have PowerDVD available to watch my blurays.
If I use the blue menu from shift-restarting through the start menu to do a reinstall, will it reinstall Windows 8.1 or Windows 10? And will it still restore the software that comes along default?
(yes, I know that most is bloatware, but I use some of that bloatware.)
Nzall
Posted 2015-10-16T20:30:41.643
Reputation: 2 585
It leaves them alone. VLC does everything PowerDVD does and is free by the way. Once you get the clean install the way you want it there is a way to create a new image so when you perform a Reset within Windows 10 that image is used instead but those instructions wouldn't help you achieve your current goals. – Ramhound – 2015-10-16T20:33:08.877
@Ramhound so if I use my recovery partition to restore, it will restore the Windows 8.1 as it was installed by default, and I then still have to upgrade manually to Windows 10, right? – Nzall – 2015-10-16T20:41:01.840
@Ramhound I haven't yet been able to get VLC to play blurays though, and the PowerDVD was free for me as well since it came with the laptop. – Nzall – 2015-10-16T20:41:36.540
It does leave the partitions intact (unmolested) but the recovery software will not boot from the factory recovery partition any more due to the bootloader being modified. Some suggest marking the recovery partition as "active" will allow booting into it on the next restart of the PC, results may vary. – Moab – 2015-10-16T20:50:31.073
Honestly it is shocking your able to play commercial BlueRay disk with a 5 version old PowerDVD – Ramhound – 2015-10-16T21:09:01.580
@Ramhound Trust me, it's not by choice. I would be using VLC for it if I could get it to work. But, it does show the blu-ray icon when starting up, and i have managed to get it to play blu-rays. – Nzall – 2015-10-16T21:18:47.310