Installation :: Reset / Clean The Drives And Wipe All Files?
Feb 10, 2016
I am currently an Windows 7 Professional user, and I was seriously considering to jump to Windows 10.
After upgrading, I was thinking in doing a factory reset, in order to try to mimic a clean install of the system. When exploring the options on Internet, I discovered an option to clean de drives completely.
Currently I have 2 drives, my C unit where the OS and most of my software is, and a D drive, in which I have my music, documents, videos and other files not relevant for the system itself.
If I select the options to clean the drives, will it delete both drives or just the C drive?
I was just wondering if installing windows 10 in a clean install will wipe all my data , I know it will format local disk c (on which windows is installed ) but what about other drives ?
I have a problem, I installed windows 10 and now I'm stuck in a boot loop after attempting a reset to wipe my files in hopes to make things a little faster, and now I'm unable to do anything other than enter the BIOS.
So i just finished building my new pc and im installing windows 10 on it and i added this old hdd for extra space from my old pc but it has windows 10 preview build on it and the whole filebase from the previous pc. How to wipe the old OS and all the stuff on it? Do i just format it or do i have to do something else? will it mess with my pc since im installing the new windows 10 on an ssd but the hdd has the preview windows on it so basically two copys of windows....
I just upgraded my notebook from 8.1. Win 10 is activated. I did the upgrade by creating an ISO using MCT, expanding the files to a USB hdd, then running Setup. I would now like to do a clean reinstall. Since I do not have bootable external media for the notebook, I'm wondering if the System Reset with the "Keep nothing" option would be equivalentto a "bare-metal" clean install?
I read that Reset This PC does a clean install of windows. I waited hours, and when it completed, I had the same loadout as before, with all the Asus bloatware.
So, I read Windows 10 doesn't need a recovery partition anymore. I figured since I had one, Reset This PC loaded from there.
I deleted the recovery partition, ran Reset This PC again, and I got the following error: "Could not find the recovery environment"
So, I can never use reset this pc again? How can I make a new recovery partition, after I spend days manually researching whats needed and removing all the bloatware?
I upgraded my Asus X205TA to Windows 10. However I wanted get a clean install so I went into recovery and chose to reset the PC and clean all apps,files, etc.
Whenever I try this it fails then gives me a blue screen with options. Only booting back to Win10 only works.
Is there a way I can get my win10 key and install from a win 10 download?
I did go back to Windows Download tool and had it create a USB stick. Can I use this to do a clean install?
I don't want to move on unless I know I can get Win 10 installed on this again. I know once I erase everythign my there is no option to go back to Win 8.1.
I am a total UEFI n00b, only having one PC with it all others being legacy BIOS systems. I know my way around BIOS and have now familiarized myself with UEFI settings, I think that in settings and how to change them / what they do.
My issues are with a clean install wiping the whole disk, and to understand the partitioning. This PC had an OEM German Windows 8.1 which I upgraded to 8.1 Pro, then replaced the German 8.1 Pro with an UK English one simply by clean installing a retail 8.1 Pro on top of the German one, not wiping the disk but the "traditional" way which simply moved the German OS to Windows.old folder which I later removed.
The UK English 8.1 Pro was later upgraded to 10 Pro Build 10240, further to builds 10525, 10532 and finally now to 10547. Now I would like to start from scratch, clean install totally wiping the disk.
Questions:
Why three recovery partitions (white highlight in screenshot above). I understand the last one, it's the manufacturer's recovery partition which allows me to restore the original OEM German Windows 8.1. But why the two others?How do I proceed with clean installing Build 10547 wiping the whole disk? I tried it, got to disk tools in setup, removed all other partitions but the dialog didn't let me to delete the partition C: (yellow highlight)Essentially I would like to start from this situation (screenshot from this TF tutorial), whole disk unallocated space, partition it as I want to and install Windows. If this was a BIOS system I could easily do it, the Windows Setup Disk Tools dialog creating the System Reserved automatically when I create the first partition in that unallocated space, but UEFI seemingly lets me to delete all other partitions but not the C:
I have recent system images allowing me to restore this functioning system anytime I want to, making experimenting easy.
Just a curiosity of mine - Is there a difference between a clean install and performing an upgrade while keeping only the files? In other words, is this sort of upgrade the same as a clean install, only with the files restored to 'documents', desktop, etc.? Or, does the new windows folder contain remnants of the previous install.
Successfully upgraded to Windows 10, all applications and settings works perfectly and all previous problems are gone.
I've been facing a collection of annoying problems with my Windows 8.1, specifically setting saving problem, for example can't save settings like default app, folder and icon size, i didn't update to Win10 yet because i am working on very important projects.
My question is, do you think this kind of problems will be fixed after updating to Win10 by keeping all my files, programs, etc... ?Or should i do a clean installation of Win10 so my computer will be "system-new".
When upgrading I get"windows version is on a not supported folder" and all other settings greyed out but clean install.My C drive is on a SSD. Using MediaCreation tool .Tried various things (URL...)
My laptop became a bit slow and explorer crashes often. So, to clean install, I am guessing "Reset this PC" should work.
There are 2 options "Keep my files" and "remove everything". I have partitioned the hard drive space it to 4 local disks and installed windows 10 on C drive. I want only C drive to be cleaned and rest of the disks data to be intact. Which option to choose?
Additional Info: My laptop came with Windows 8 and I upgraded to W10. So I am hoping this reset option wouldn't mess with activation.
So, since build 9841 I've been using Windows 10 Insider Preview (IP) as my mainly driver. Until the recent redstone builds, Visual Studio has been plagued with problems (From Windows Universal Apps Development to ASP.NET) . I've installed Windows 10 IP in the SSD and have been using it very happily since I've had no major issues, until the ones I've outlined before.
In my Hybrid HDD I had Windows 10 RTM (10586) installed and didn't use it for a quite while (3 months). When these problems rose, I decided to start using that partition again, but out of the blue it decided to start giving me some serious problems: mostly, the whole XAML interface (Start, Volumen, Sound, Battery, etc.) didn't show up. After trying some fixes (From reinstalling Windows Apps to Creating a separate user), I decide to refresh the bits. Unfortunately, even after refreshing my machine didn't fix the XAML interface problems and even worse: I got no possibility to run Universal Apps.
I went and ran some hard disk checkups, from both: the Lenovo Utility and CheckDisk and none threw an error.
The actual problem: Yesterday (Feb. 4) I decide to clean install Windows 10 Build 10586 64-bit in the Hybrid HDD partition (without deleting the OEM reserved spaces) and I'm stuck now on Finalizing the settings. Is there a way to fix it? Tried hitting Shift + F10, but in that specific screen it does not work. In previous screens there are no anomalies.
As last resort I must wipe out everything in both drives and start from zero. I would not like to do that, since Visual Studio is so tough to install (takes too darned long). Is there a way to resort to an alternate method?
I have upgraded to Windows 10 and it's activated. Now I want to do a clean install using the "media creation tool", but I'm not sure if it's going to affect my C drive only or all the partitions. And also, should I just reset the PC from the recovery option in the settings?
All my files are gone, but when I go into Windows Explorer the file system says that this PC has 856 GB out of 1.81 TB full, but I have nothing there. When I click on it all my games etc are not there, and I don't know how to get them back. When I reset Windows I clicked "keep my files" so where are my files? My internet is really slow and would take way to long to re-download and i wont have enough space because all my files are there i cant find them anywhere.
I have just copied all my files from google drive to one drive. In Windows 10, where should I copy them so as to have a master file that will automaticly sync them to the foregoing drives?
With Win7 I used to open one external drive, then through My computer locate the other drive. I would have each drive on its own window. I could then select relevant files on one drive copy and paste into the other drive. With Win10 if I click on File explorer I can open one external drive, where can I locate the other drive to put in a separate window. If I click on the other drive, it just opens it in the same window. Win7 and previous versions used to be so simple.
You know how hitting windows and then typing in a program name brings it up? How do I bring the programs from another drive? I'm okay if that means ONLY bringing up programs that the other drive.
I am using two computers at home one with windows vista 32bit and the other with windows 10 64bit both are home versions. I want to map the drive on my win10 machine to access my saved files and wanna share from my vista one but when I do it I cannot connect to it because it my windows 10 machine doesn't have the same user and pass but that's irrelevant I guess because no matter what use/pass i use it says this drive is mapped to another user/pass even though there is only 2 accounts on the pc that i have access to and have full access to the shared drive.
I have password protection off for the vista machine because it would be stupid to have to use a password to print since my printer is shared just fine and I can print from any pc. Everguid I use is just not detailed enough I have tried using different credentials bt they don't work.
My question is, does the Windows 10 option to "reset and keep files" repair everything, including any broken registry things that I might have screwed up? I'm not that experienced with this, so could be a silly question.
Some background info: my computer was basically functioning normally, except for some kind of minor issues (slow downs, occasional program crashes, etc) and warnings that kept popping up in my event viewer yet I didn't really "see" the effects of most of them in everyday computer use (I'm an amateur though). This was not virus or malware related, I don't think. (I ran numerous virus scans and also used virus/malware removal, even though it didn't appear I had any, plus I have Avast and MBAM always on my computer.)
So I'm wondering if I probably screwed up the registry because I stupidly used CCleaner's registry clean-up a couple times, and have since learned I should never touch that.
I ran the Dell diagnostics to make sure it wasn't a hardware issue, by the way, and that all passed.
I had Windows 7 and did the upgrade to Windows 10. I just decided to do Windows 10's option to "reset and keep files" to do a clean install to see if that fixes these things. So I'm wondering if the registry is repaired with that kind of reset? And if it never was the registry that was the problem, will the other potential causes be repaired as well? Just want to make sure I made the right choice to reset.
I installed windows 10 and I want to delete ALL files on my PC, but I don't have any windows disc/serial or something of that nature, right now, I have a serial written since the first time I installed windows, but lost the installation disc since. Can I reset the files?
