Refresh Windows is a new tool from Microsoft that allows users to do a fresh and clean re-installation of latest version of Windows 10.
This tool is intended for Windows 10 users only and promises a fresh restart for your PC. With this you can install a clean copy of the most recent version of Windows.
Although, the tool was not released officially by Microsoft, somehow it was leaked online and publicly available for download from Microsoft downloads repository.
For now this tool only works with Windows 10 Insider Preview builds, actually it was intended to work with Windows 10 Anniversary update (builds) which will be released by the end of this july.
What does Refresh Windows actually do ?
If something goes wrong with your PC and you want to reset it, then you can utilize Windows 10 inbuilt ‘Reset’ function (Update & Security > Recovery) that will re-install Windows OS while letting you keep or remove certains files.
However, Refresh Windows is a standalone application and when you run the tool it provides two options: keep personal files only & nothing.
When ‘keep personal files’ option is selected, your settings and apps will be deleted, but your files will be kept. While ‘nothing’ option will delete everything including files, settings and apps.
After selecting any one of these two options, you can hit the ‘Install‘ button and the tool will download the latest version of Windows 10 and will start the installation process.
The main difference between inbuilt ‘Reset’ function and Refresh Windows is, the standalone tool will download the very latest build of Windows , afterwards you don’t need to install updates.
The benefit is, the tool saves your time & bandwidth for installing all updates, whereas the downside is the tool does not offer any option to download & save ISO images of Windows 10, straightaway it will download & install latest build.
Download Refresh Windows Tool : download.microsoft.com/download
Note : As mentioned earlier, currently this tool doesn’t work on Windows 10 stable version and only useful for users having Redstone builds aka Insider Previews on their PC.