Purchased an open-box laptop, how do I do a fresh install?

budmonster · 25 Dec 2015

Winuser said:

If this laptop is for a 6 year old I wouldn't worry about upgrading the ram or HDD.

So this laptop is plenty sufficient enough for games like Minecraft, etc. It would be light gaming, learning programs and applications to help with school, watch his movies, etc.

I'm think laptop wise, for a 6yr old, this is a good first one and will last a while. I think price wise to I did pretty well, $400 with some good specs I fell. Some people on other "forums" where telling me to spend $700, on child! I actually returned a laptop I previously bought for $200 but because these guys got in my head saying it was garbage, it'll be too slow for my son, blah blah I took it back.

Word Man · 25 Dec 2015

budmonster said:

Wouldn't Option 3: Reset Windows 10 using Push Button Reset be my best option as it says:

Option 4 says

I thought the whole point was to put clean Win 10 on the laptop without any Dell apps/software (bloatware)? So 3, 4? Also, I was told to try a program called Decrap My Computer. I don't know anything about it, however a user posted it over at the TechSupport subreddit.

By the way, thanks for all the help. Much appreciated.

I understand where you want to go but was only suggesting option 4 as a quick and safe way to get to "out of the box" condition in your limited time. Hope you ended up happy before it was time to wrap up the gift!

I would have done 4 just because the box had been opened and who knows what had been done to it after opening.

Here's what I did with my Dell laptop (although mine came with Win 8.1):

Made factory restore media on both a USB flash drive and on an external USB HDD, using Dell Backup and Recovery.
After taking the Win10 upgrade through Windows update (not necessary for you), made an entire disk image to an external HDD with Macrium Reflect.
Downloaded the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool and made a bootable USB flash drive version of the Windows 10 install (you could alternatively get a Win10 ISO to burn to a DVD that's bootable, this also from Tech Bench rather than through MCT).
Performed a clean install of Win10 Home which included wiping out ALL partitions (including the factory restore partition).
Enjoyed a Dell crapware free Windows 10 install.
Bought an SSD, imaged the entire original HDD with Macrium Reflect, physically swapped the HDD for the SSD, and restored the MR image to the SSD.
Started the laptop, ran "winsat formal", and have been chugging along on that for 5 months or so, problem free.

However, as was already mentioned, Steps 7 and 8 could be overkill for the use of a 6 year old.

Winuser · 26 Dec 2015

budmonster said:

So this laptop is plenty sufficient enough for games like Minecraft, etc. It would be light gaming, learning programs and applications to help with school, watch his movies, etc.

I'm think laptop wise, for a 6yr old, this is a good first one and will last a while. I think price wise to I did pretty well, $400 with some good specs I fell. Some people on other "forums" where telling me to spend $700, on child! I actually returned a laptop I previously bought for $200 but because these guys got in my head saying it was garbage, it'll be too slow for my son, blah blah I took it back.

Looking at the specs I think you did OK. It should serve your needs for for awhile. My new laptop is an i3 and it's does everything I want. I do very limited gaming so I don't know if it can do Minecraft or not.

Antilope · 27 Dec 2015

Just an FYI, a clean install of Windows 10 takes about 13gb to 15gb of disk space.