Ray potts, I agree, however I do a disk clone, anything goes wrong I can switch over cables and use the clone, then repeat, probably takes longer to clone but with a clone a matter of switching sata cables and you are up and running in minutes, without having to re-install everything before restoring to a backup

Frank D, I can't see the point either.

To [ t800 ], no one needs to use a Microsoft account to install or use Windows - web search for workarounds to bypass Microsoft's attempt to Apple-ize/monitize Windows users.

MartinB,
Havr you ever created a recovery drive on USB flash drive, for your Asus computer?

Any success?

MartinB,
Download the Windows Installation disc from its website using another PC and do a clean reinstall. Use Rufus to create a bootable USB and install from that USB. I have done this few times now in past 3 months on 2 different machines.
You do not need to even activate your windows if you will use the same login as your original. It seems that Windows now stores what system you have and it is automatically activated as long as you install the same version of Windows i.e. if you have Windows Home edition and you reinstall Windows Home edition then you do not have to do anything in terms of activating it.
Only problem is - you will lose all your previously install software and will have to reinstall everything. I lost quite a bit of good GAOTD software due to this.
If you have Windows Office then for that you will need the product key post its reinstallation - that is not stored in your account.

MartinB,
You've basically explained why I usually ignore microcrap updates, and i've never had problems for years and years, and will not be going past my windows 7 system - if I have to it will Linux in future or Mac.

Thanks for the responses, I bought this PC as a travelling machine about 6 or 7 years ago, small and light, it started life with Win 8.1 on, I set up a Win 8.1 recovery USB, then I installed Win 10, worked ok, it's sitting in a corner for now. When I tried to revive it after the failed update, I couldn't get it to boot into Windows, or to boot from USB, endlessly going through recovery screens, entering bitlocker key, I'll dust it off and have another try sometime, not counting on much success though. I've installed this giveaway on my current PC, hopefully it'll give me some extra tools. Thanks again for responses.

TK, thanks - the PC works in that I can get into the BIOS settings, but being a pretty basic machine - Atom CPU, 32GB "hard drive" (eMMC) / 2GB RAM, the BIOS doesn't have as many settings as other machines I've had, so far I haven't got it to boot from USB.

Benny Good, from which Windows OS did this start?. I never had it on my XP and didn't notice it on my wife's Vista. My present PC is Win7 64bit, I've done a lot of work on it down its years and can't say I noticed it then either?.

Mike, I don't know when MS started using a restore partition, but I have restored Vista PC's (desktop & laptop) using the restore partition. My current HP desktop and laptop, both with Win 7 Pro have restore partitions and I've used them. While you can generally buy restore discs from the manufacturer, the PC's I seen since Vista have had the restore partition.

Benny Good, Recovery didn't work on my laptop, I haven't tried destructive reinstallation as it really ought to be something that replacing a few errant files should rectify.

Mike, The restore partitions are provided by the PC manufacturer, not by Microsoft. Some provide it and some do not.

Benny Good, You and the other commenters miss the point completely. If the Hard Drive in your PC craters, the recovery partition is no longer accessible, That is the entire point of having a backup and/or System Image on external media. It allows you to replace the hard drive and reload your OS and Apps. You can buy replacement hard drives but you can't retrieve data from a failed hard drive without spending hundreds of dollars. Think about it, if you back up your data only to the same hard drive that it's stored on, what happens when that drive goes belly up?

Benny Good, Mike, HellsBells, just to put you all at ease thought i would give you all a more detailed explanation to these subjects you are wondering about so here goes.starting first with recovery and all desktop or laptops having them by default. this is very much not the case however if you happened to of purchased your desktop or laptop with the operating system pre-installed from a retailer as such for example pcworld .co .uk and lets say the brand is asus or acer then without a doubt it will come also with a recovery partition with that brands recovery programme in order to recover it and maintaining the integrity of your windows product key that came with it. but if lets say you decided to upgrade and bought a digital licence or retail install disk of windows to manually install yourself then it most definately does not come with a partitioned recovery like the asus or acer would come with but every windows comes with some basic recovery you can enter by inserting the disk at bootup or whatnot which usually will let you do stuff like system restore or with windows 8 and 10 u can also do a system reset which is basicly just like the asus and acer only the asus and acer will restore all the apps(bloatware) that came with it when you bought it where as windows reset(fresh start) would do the same only with the basic apps that come from microsoft with windows which isnt so really bloatware like the asus and acer would be. and also would maintain the integrity of your product key. now to this giveaway at hand and to maybe answer also Hariharasuthan KS question this software will allow you to clone your entire hardisk containing windows for example in the exact state it is at the time you clone it so all your installed programmes along with licenses, product keys as such even in the registry and including its own as that also gets cloned u can have it cloned on seperate hdd or ssd to hold in storage in a safe place in case of such a fatal loss of access like martinB's comment at the top of commentsso you could just connect the cloned drive boot up the pc and have everything still there installed from the point at which you created the cloned disk then u could safely just format the other that u lost access to then clone your system once again to that disk that is what the benefits are from this givawayas to you branded recovery and basic built in recovery hope this answered all your questions have a good day guys stay safe :).

lee thompson,
There is a key on your keyboard that looks like a tiny circle, try using it sometimes.
Period, End Of Sentence!

lee thompson, that clears that up then, I self-build my computers. But having it save everything as is now to another drive, then just redoing it every couple of weeks to keep it up to date. It's surely the way to go to beat Ransomeware. You don't usually get the chance of getting this sort of software free.

Terry T., my humblest apologies. i will try to do better next time. had i only of known this was a literature test. i would of made a much better effort too. acheive that outstanding one of a kind. Terry T renowned certificate of acheivment in english literacy. hopefully in the near future i may earn it. i cannot begin to stress how really truly sorry i am. for not living up to the Terry T standards.

Peter G, Cheers

Bob, thought it was odd that I've never seen it on my self-builds.

Peter G,.....restore partitions are provided by the PC manufacturer.... In my case Medion.

nvingo, If you can get logged in, try (at the command prompt) sfc /scannow It is a system file checker that replaces system files if they are corrupt.

Mike, Most often, on a single disk system it is hidden on the drive named D:

HP computers (maybe others) used to only allow you to create discs once. They added or deleted a file that signaled the system not to allow a second set. I think this was either to force you to buy a second set from them, or was a way to keep people from easily making lots of copies to either distribute to others or sell.

lee thompson,

Thank you so much for your very helpful comments. Ignore a mean-spirited post and keep contributing to this site, because you are certainly a very knowledgeable person and many of us can learn from you .

Best Regards,

consuella

Terry, Thanks for your cryptic comment, but my keyboard does not have a key that looks like a" tiny circle". How about hint #2, in plain English. The key on your keyboard that looks like a tiny circle, is located between the ------ keys, usually on row --.

lee thompson, good answer! :D

lee thompson, What a sarcastic and fatuous answer to a reasonable and salient point made by Terry T.
Your writing is dreadful and reads like gibbersih at times. I staggered through both posts and am not much the wiser for wasting a couple of minutes of my time.

Mike, Run a recovery program on your computer (don't try to recover) and it should show ALL the partitions on the drive. I believe most partition managers will do this as well.

Hariharasuthan KS, Most software is registered to the CPU so you will have to register the serial again. Cloning software doesn't clone the registry.

DenisX, it does clone the registry and if you have photoshop installed now and you clone the windows drive that its installed on your licencse key if you have one for it will also get cloned so photoshop will still be registered and active on the cloned drive aswell as the one its cloned from. ps. a clone would not be a clone if the registry was not cloned also simple fact being that windows can not function at all without a registry so what would be the point of cloning it to begin with if this was the case. Hariharasuthan KS take my word for it i have this software from the previous giveaway and its saved my bacon 3 times already because i would honestly much rather start from that point i cloned it as to have to start right from scratch installing all programmes,games,etc its a major headache this software islike your medicine.

lee thompson, well it maybe like your medicine, but 'SecureAPlus' says leave it alone. So I ignored this warning and downloaded it, only to have 'Malwarebytes' stop me going to their website to register it. It sounds so good too, Oh well, I've managed without it all these years...what's a guy to do?. Of course, I could just ignore Malwarebytes too couldn't I, but then what's the point of having all this protection ware if you are just going to take no notice of it?.

Name1, It only clones the shown entries. hidden entries linked to CPU are not cloned. Most major software vendors do not allow cloning their software to other PCs otherwise why buy Photoshop when you can buy a clone for fraction of price. Some software however, allowing multiple installations using one serial key can work OK
You can of course clone and re-install on same PC if you have same CPU as it will be recognised.

https://superuser.com/questions/1054712/can-the-entire-windows-registry-be-copied-to-a-new-copy-of-windows

denisX, This would not copy the Registry to a new copy of Windows. This only restores your existing Windows and Registry and Apps/Programs ans settings and personal files to where they were when you created the "clone" image. What's not clear from the description, is where that clone image can be stored. Not on CD/DVD or USB. So only to a second hard drive is my guess (and that's a good option). And is the cloned image ready to run (pop in the hard drive and power up), or does it require a "restore" program to make it work? Without more information, this falls into the category of: well, I'll install it but hope I never need it. Does it simply create ISO files that can be stored anywhere? And then how do you recover them if the hard drive where the program is installed has crashed?