In the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build you have a new feature called Windows 10 Cloud Reset. This new feature helps you to reset and reinstall your Windows 10 machine from the cloud. The feature first showed up in Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 18970 which are preview releases of Windows 10 20H1. If you wanted to reset or reinstall your Windows 10 machine, you already had the option doing that from your local installed copy of Windows 10 and reusing existing Windows files to construct a fresh copy. Or if you wanted a completely fresh install of your Windows 10 machine, you needed to download Windows and create a USB stick to boot from. The new Cloud download option in the Windows 10 recovery settings, allows you to get the best of both worlds.
Reset and reinstall Windows 10 using the cloud download feature ☁
The new Windows cloud download feature allows you to reinstall Windows 10 using fresh Windows installation files from the cloud. There is no need for a recovery partition or create a USB drive.
Brandon LeBlanc from the Windows team wrote about the benefits of using cloud download for the reset or fresh installation:
- A more reliable way to reinstall Windows ✅
- Depending on your internet speed it can be faster ✅
- No need for a USB stick or DVD ✅
There are two options to reset from the cloud. First, if you have a running copy of Windows 10 and you want to do a fresh installation, you can use the recovery.
How to reset your Windows 10 PC from the cloud in the recovery settings 💻
Reset and Reinstall Windows 10 using Cloud download
If you have currently a running Windows 10 machine and you want to initiate a reset or reinstallation from with the cloud download option, you can do this through the Windows settings.
- Open Settings
- Go to Update & Security
- Click on Recovery
- On the recovery screen, select Get started
- Choose between Keep my files or Remove everything
- Now you can select Cloud download or Local reinstallation
- If you select Cloud download, this will use Windows Update to download the fresh Windows files
How to reinstall Windows 10 from the cloud if you can’t boot
Windows RE recovery cloud download
In the case that you are not able to boot your Windows 10 machine anymore, you can start your reinstallation using cloud download from Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE).
- Click on Troubleshoot
- Click on Reset this PC
- Choose between Keep my files or Remove everything
- Now you can select Cloud download or Local reinstallation
- This will need drivers for the network adapter in the Windows RE image. Most of the time you have drivers for the wired connection. It might also work with wireless network connection depending on the drivers loaded by the PC vendor in the Windows RE image.
Conclusion
Cloud download is a great new option to reset and reinstall your Windows 10 machine, and getting it back to a healthy and fresh installation. This is just another great new feature in Windows 10 like other improvements we have seen over the last couple of years.
If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and use the Feedback Hub.
Check out other Windows 10 improvements like:
- Tar and Curl in Windows 10
- SSH in Windows 10
- The Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 (WSL 2) in Windows 10
Awesome! Will it automatcailly always take the newest available (released( Windows 10 version or does it in some way look at the currwntly installed version and choose that one?
The option: Cloud download or Local reinstallation did not come up? Is it because I’m running an old Windows 10 build?
Hi Velu, yes this is highly likely. Because you will need Windows, version 2004 or 20H1 (which is currently available to Windows Insiders).