Imagine a situation when your system fails to boot and you do not have any recovery or installation media. You also don’t have any other system to create these media. And you want your system to be fully functional because you want to perform an urgent task. In these kind of scenarios, usually the clean install or Reset can be a recovery option. But now you can use cloud rebuild, a new recovery option in Windows 11 specifically designed to deal situations like this.
As of this writing, cloud rebuild feature has been available in latest Windows 11 Insider Preview builds. You can try it today using Windows Insider Experimental Preview Build 26300.8772.
When your device fails to boot, use this feature you have to simply head over to the Windows Recovery Environment (RE). Once you are there, you should be able to use Cloud Rebuild option.
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Introducing Cloud Rebuild recovery feature
Using this feature, IT administrators and end users can easily restore a clean, known-good state by performing a full operating system reinstall. Cloud rebuild downloads both the target Windows image and the device’s drivers from Windows Update, so the device comes back fully functional, without USB media, without a custom image, and without depending on the integrity of the installed operating system.
Once the rebuild has been completed, end users have the ability to configure OOBE options. For managed devices, you can re-provision automatically through Windows Autopilot, Microsoft Intune, Backup for Organizations, and OneDrive.
Things to know before using Cloud Rebuild
Since cloud rebuild fully reinstall back the functional OS, you must proceed with precaution about your data.
When you use Cloud Rebuild feature, following may occur:
- The feature would erase all the disk content, along with locally stored files. Apps, settings, accounts will also be discarded.
- To prevent data loss, you must back up into an online service such as Onedrive. The OneDrive or any other online service you are using for file storage won’t be affected.
- Make sure you let the cloud rebuild process completed without any interruption. If there is an interruption, it can make Windows not bootable at all.
- Ensure your device is connected to the power supply, or you have sufficient battery to complete cloud rebuild process.
How to use Cloud Rebuild in Windows 11
1. When your system is failed to boot, it would be automatically entering to Windows Recovery Environment. If you want to try out this feature, you can manually trigger Windows recovery environment by going to Settings app > System Recovery > Advanced startup > Restart now.
2. Under Choose an option, select Troubleshoot.
3. Now in the Troubleshoot screen, you’ll be able to select the Cloud Rebuild option.
4. Then the Cloud Rebuild feature would load, you can click on the Continue button after confirming the information.
5. In the next screen, once you select Install, the full reinstall will be performed in order to get your system back to the fully functional state.
6. You can track the progress of full reinstall or feature completion as shown in the screenshot below.
