Another Monday on it’s way.

Yes you read it right, another Monday. I have to make a real quick introduction prior to this Monday.

I was so excited about my weekend I was up to for anything, but unfortunately my computer died on me so i had no choice but to fix it.

let me elaborate a bit more on problem with my PC.

So I’m windows insider for more then three years now, and in “Fast Ring” which means I’m among first insiders that get preview build and we get it every Thursday.

Some times those updates can be minor with just some regular fixes, and sometimes they can be HUGE, with tons of new features which I’m excited about and thus I enrolled in Windows Insider program.

So on March 22nd I downloaded and installed 17127 preview update, it got installed successfully, I took a look at it and everything seemed fine, not so many new features available but I was that guy that always wants latest update installed.

There is a good rule of thumb for Windows Insiders and it’ll be: Never ever ever install Preview builds on your main PC, which of course I did not follow, and everything was functioning well until March 22nd.

Update got installed I took a glimpse turned off my PC left for work.

When I got back I could not boot to Windows, it was stuck on Black screen with cursor and yes I’m familiar with this problem, there is no recovery from that but to reimage your machine.

But the problem was that I don’t have 2nd partition and that i had almost no free space available for full windows installation. So I was brainstorming on how to save my data. And I remember some cool trick, and you should think of it too when you get in the same situation.

Lets start, I have downloaded Windows10 Insider ISO on my work PC, used RUFUS to create bootable USB drive, when I got home I plugged it into PC, booted from USB drive and installation started.

Next step would be not to format drive or reinstall image over but to hit SHIFT + F10, this pretty little key combo will open up a Command Prompt window.

Now that you are in Command Prompt it will open itself in some random drive I think X:\

What you need to do is to toggle through all available Drive letters until you get to your C:\ drive for example mine was E or G cant recall.

When I got into my C:\ drive, I remembered that I had Total Commander in Root of C:\

so I changed dir to CD C:\Totalcommander then I fired Total Commander executable and it ran.

Just to be clear you can backup everything through CMD but it would be so much painful and slow process and I had luck to have Total Commander installed, and it can run without any dependencies.

I hooked up my 30GB SD card to the card reader, Commander recognized it and I could backup all my important data. When I was done, I could feel free to format C:\ drive and install fresh copy of Windows. I had it up and running in less then 20 minutes, since USB was 3.0 in 3.0 port.

I booted my new Windows, loaded my Firewall rules enabled Remote Desktop connection and I was ready to go.

Lesson learned, always have some kind of alternate file explorer ready on your drive in case of emergence. Be it a total Commander, Explorer ++ or Saladin it doesn’t matter any of those would do the trick in combination with SHIFT + F10 trick.

Thanks for reading.