# My Work Laptop Broke — Here’s How I Avoided Losing Everything

> Originally written in 2025. Content may vary slightly across newer versions.

A few weeks ago, something unexpected happened at work: my laptop stopped working properly, and IT told me the only option was to reinstall the system.

I use a Lenovo P1 running Windows 10 at work. In our company setup, all software is managed and installed through **Software Center**. Normally this works fine, but in my case, Software Center stopped working properly. That meant I couldn’t install any new software — which wasn’t an immediate blocker, but it was a problem waiting to happen.

For about two weeks, IT and I tried different ways to fix it. We went through the usual troubleshooting, but nothing worked. Even though the issue didn’t stop me from doing my daily work, I knew I couldn’t just ignore it. Sooner or later I’d need to install something new, and without Software Center, I’d be stuck. I had to deal with it once and for all.

At that point, the only options were to reinstall Windows or switch to a new laptop. Reinstalling would take too long, so I chose the second option: moving to a new machine. And that meant it was time to prepare a proper backup.

### What I Decided to Back Up

When you’re about to switch laptops, it’s surprisingly hard to know what exactly you’ll need later. This was my first time really thinking it through, and I didn’t want to miss anything important. I broke it down into a few categories:

1.  **User files** — Things in Desktop and Documents. These are easy to forget but also the simplest to copy.
    
2.  **Browser data** — Mainly my Chrome bookmarks. I exported them as an `.html` file so I could import them later.
    
3.  **VS Code setup** — I backed up the entire User folder, which included themes, fonts, and terminal configs.
    
4.  **Dev config** — Just the essentials: my `.gitconfig` and SSH keys.
    
5.  **Email folders** — In Outlook, I backed up a couple of emails I considered important, and some HR/Admin-related messages.
    

### Restoring on the New System

Once I had the new laptop, I started putting everything back. Desktop and Documents were straightforward — I just copied them over, and everything ended up in the right place.

For Chrome, I opened the bookmarks manager and used **Import Bookmarks** to bring in the `.html` file I had exported. Everything was in the right folders, just like on my old laptop.

For VS Code, I first opened it once so that the User folder was created. Then I used the backup of my entire User folder to overwrite the new one. This restored all my settings. For extensions, I manually reinstalled them because of company restrictions.

For development configuration, I copied over `.gitconfig` and the `.ssh` folder, then tested my GitHub connection to make sure it worked.

For Outlook, I realized the backup wasn’t necessary — once I logged in, all my emails were already there.

Some of my project folders were large, so copying them took a few hours. In hindsight, since all the projects were already pushed to GitHub, I could have just cloned the repositories and set up the local environment, which would have been faster.

After finishing all of this, I checked over everything and realized the new laptop felt just like the old one. The whole restoration process was smoother and quicker than I had expected.

### Lesson Learned

The main lesson I took away from this experience is that **a little preparation goes a long way**. Making sure I had all the core files backed up — like my user files, VS Code settings, and development configs — made the process smooth and predictable. Other things, like emails or project files that were already synced to the cloud, didn’t actually need to be backed up.

At first, I was worried about potentially losing something important and how that might affect my work. But once I went through the process, I realized that as long as I prepared properly, everything went smoothly. What initially felt like a stressful, high-stakes task turned into a manageable and controlled process.