A Surprisingly Refreshing Surface Laptop Studio Reset

I finally did something I almost never do…I reset my daily‑driver PC. And honestly? It turned out to be one of the most positive Windows maintenance experiences I’ve had in years.

I’d been running the Release Preview Insider build of Windows 11 on my Surface Laptop Studio, and things had been mostly fine—until they weren’t. Out of nowhere, the system started crashing every time I connected an Xbox controller. In classic “I can fix this” fashion and based on some questionable advice from various forums, I poked around, removed a few drivers, and did in fact fix the controller issue… while also completely breaking all input on the machine following a reboot later that same day. Wired, Bluetooth, built‑in, touch… everything went sideways. And when you can’t interact with the UI, it makes troubleshooting nigh impossible. Even I had to admit defeat.

I tried a repair install first, but the damage was deeper than I wanted to untangle. This Windows installation had been running since I bought the machine early 2024, which is practically a personal record for me, so I decided it was time for a clean slate. A full reset felt like the right move. But it was daunting; after all, I use this machine hours every day for both work and fun. I had it set up exactly the way I wanted it.

The process took a while, but it was smooth and uneventful…which I guess is exactly what you want from a reset. When it came back up, everything worked perfectly. I also took this opportunity to step off the Insider track. As much as I enjoy getting early access to features, I prefer stability.

But the real hero here was OneDrive, which I know takes a lot of hits by most of the folks on this site. Because all my data was already backed up, the reset wasn’t a stressful “hope I didn’t forget anything” situation. My files reappeared almost instantly (albeit many on the cloud), and I could get right back to work. I pay for and have plenty of OneDrive storage, but I also have a couple of business tenants connected, and once I logged back into them, everything was “right where I left it.”

In fact, the longest and most labor-intensive part of the whole process wasn’t Windows; rather, it was reinstalling and signing into all my apps again. While I get most of my apps from the store, the sign-in process is still arduous and repetitive, especially given how many require TFA. I’m seriously considering using something like Winget to automate app reinstalls next time.

All that said, the payoff has been huge. The system feels noticeably snappier and far less bloated. I went from roughly 50 GB free to over 200 GB free, partly because I chose not to reinstall a handful of games I rarely touch. The whole experience was so positive that I might start doing this proactively every six to twelve months.