Microsoft have unveiled a new feature of Windows 8 that is the refresh and reset your PC feature.

The Reset feature is designed to reinstall Windows 8 in the event of a crash. So, for example, if your PC crashes and you are in the predicament of having to reinstall the OS, apaprently the simply touch of a button will allow you to do this.

Refresh is apparently designed to do the same thing, but keeping your personal files and folders.

I guess this is a more advanced backup and recovery feature, but made simpler by simply needing to only push a button. As Microsoft put it, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just push a button and everything is fixed?”.

More details can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/01/04/refresh-and-reset-your-pc.aspx

We have been notified by Southern Electric that all power should now be restored and we shouldn’t expect any further powercuts. They found where the problem was lying in the underground cabling and have been working all day today and will be working tomorrow morning to fix the problem. While they do this they have put us on another system that is currently providing us with the power.

If we hear any more I will of course update the blog and our Twitter account .

We would like to thank all clients for their patience while Southern Electric dealt with the issue. We have this week had to replace two UPSs and purchase a backup generator to ensure services stayed running for our clients and while there was downtime, we worked around the clock to minimise the impact and to keep everything going.

We had no power issues overnight – an engineer stayed up here at the office to monitor the situation and reported no issues. I myself came in at 6 to relieve the engineer from his night watch.

At around 08:30 one of the phases did go down and we were quick to react. We switched everything over to the backup generator in minutes, the new UPS did its job keeping up the majority of the servers but identified a couple that didn’t stay up. Throughout the morning we had phases up and down, but the UPSs kept everything up during this period.

We had some replacement batteries in this morning to replace the batteries that got killed in another UPS due to the power outages. With that now in place we are confident that the UPSs will now hold to enable us to switch over to a working power supply when needed. The backup generator continues to run and give us the power needed.

The Southern Electric engineers have been in today and have told they may have found the fault but are checking for any others before they go digging. Should they still not be able to resolve the fault today we do plan on having someone here overnight to cover the night duty once again to ensure your services are up and running.

Updates to follow, thank you once again for your patience and we can assure you we continue to monitor the situation 24 7.

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