Factory Reset troubleshooting

Prey allows you to remotely restore your Windows or MacOS device to factory settings, securely wiping all the data within it and leaving it as it was when first booted, ready to be provisioned or stored. If you’re having trouble running this action, please try the following:

I’ve run the Factory Reset action, but the reinstallation failed.

• Check your devices’ compatibility with the Factory Reset action.
• • The device must be running Windows 10 or higher.
  • A recovery partition must be created. If you need to create this partition, please check this external article.
• Your device must be linked to our APNS MDM certificate. Please check this article for more information.

My device is compatible, but the action is still not executed.

• Check the target device’s online status

If the target device is not online at the moment of request, the Factory Reset action will be queued until the device comes back online.

• Check whether the device is connected to a power outlet

In order to correctly install the operating system without any complication, Prey requires your device to be connected to a power outlet to execute the action. Please make sure the device is plugged in, and then try again.

I’ve tried everything and nothing works!

Please contact our Support team with the following information:

• The device_key for the device that’s not able to execute actions (you can find this is in the address bar of your browser when in the Device view).
• If you have access to the device, please include the Prey.log and Prey.conf files from the device you’re attempting to locate. To extract these files, please follow these steps:
  • You can locate the prey.log and prey.conf files in the installation folder for the Prey client (by default C:\Windows\Prey)
  • Execute the following strings in a Terminal window:
    cat /var/log/prey.log
cat /etc/prey/prey.conf
    Afterwards, copy and paste the information on a text file.

Our team will get in touch with you within 24 working hours.