Advice to reinstall on a 1 month old new computer

First thing to know is that this is a 1 month old new ACER Aspire ES1-533-C55P (x64) notebook Win10 Home (x64).

About a month ago a friend called me about his wife wasn't able to log in to their Yahoo email account because the password wasn't working anymore and the forgot password process wasn't going anywhere and that was going for at least 3 months and that was on an XP computer. The other day they called Yahoo and it was discovered their email account had been seriously hacked. My friend called me last night: in the course of depending on whatever "technical support" was doing, the computer got completely wiped-out.

When I was originally talking with them about a month ago, I created a USB Recovery Drive and included backup system files. From what I've read it can be used to reinstall the OS. Is that true and how is it possible?

I do know how to use Clean Install Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials . It will be a fresh install w/o ACER's stuff on it although it most likely would void the standard 1 year warranty for hardware.

Opinions please.

One more thing, will I still be able to get into the UEFI BIOS fast boot or secure boot?

MeAndMyComputer said:

I do know how to use Clean Install Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials . It will be a fresh install w/o ACER's stuff on it although it

I suggest you backup the drivers first. Plug in a USB thumb drive and (assuming it gets the letter "E") and make a directory "E:\Drivers.

Then save them all like this from an elevated powershell prompt.

PHP Code:

Export-WindowsDriver -Online -Destination "E:\Drivers" 


See the tutorial her Backup and Restore Device Drivers in Windows 10 Hardware Drivers Tutorials

Once you have clean installed if there are any drivers missing you can stick in the USB key and update the correct ACER drivers from there.

MeAndMyComputer said:

One more thing, will I still be able to get into the UEFI BIOS fast boot or secure boot?

This has nothing to do with whether Windows or another OS is installed or not. It will work - don't worry about it.

MeAndMyComputer said:

My friend called me last night: in the course of depending on whatever "technical support" was doing, the computer got completely wiped-out.

Will it still be possible to use the recovery drive to get to the Troubleshoot: Recover from a drive option?

Bree said:

Yes, you can use your Recovery Drive with system files included to do a clean install of Windows. Congratulations @MeAndMyComputer on making one, not many bother to do that.

Thank you Bree: I appreciate that. I have a habit of doing that: To me that's the minimum step to take.

MeAndMyComputer said:

Will it still be possible to use the recovery drive to get to the Troubleshoot: Recover from a drive option?

Yes. The recovery drive is bootable and has all the source files needed for a complete install of Windows 10. The Troubleshoot section is part of the recovery drive's system, it doesn't use anything from the PC. No software is required to be working on the PC, just the ability to boot from a USB and that the hardware is in working order (even if the HDD is now empty).

The only difference between doing a clean install with a recovery drive and using an ISO from Microsoft is that the recovery drive should also install any OEM customizations that were part of the PC that made the recovery drive. Those would have been included when you included system files.

Well this story isn't good. My friend called me today and told me his wife's computer is locked up and they have to pay to get back into the computer: whoever Yahoo support led him to did that to the computer. It probably wasn't Yahoo support he called but I can't tell. They don't understand that it's some ransomware as opposed to the computer being completely wiped out.

BTW, this thread is a continuation of
Does Yahoo block an email account after umpteen unsuccessful attempts?
Does Yahoo block an email account after umpteen unsuccessful attempts Solved - Windows 10 Forums

Is it possible to get his computer back in proper order?
Is it possible to remove the HDD and connect it as an external HDD on another computer and wipe the HDD clean and go from there?
Or maybe buy a replacement HDD and go from there?

Bree said:

Yes. The recovery drive is bootable and has all the source files needed for a complete install of Windows 10. The Troubleshoot section is part of the recovery drive's system, it doesn't use anything from the PC. No software is required to be working on the PC, just the ability to boot from a USB and that the hardware is in working order (even if the HDD is now empty).

The only difference between doing a clean install with a recovery drive and using an ISO from Microsoft is that the recovery drive should also install any OEM customizations that were part of the PC that made the recovery drive. Those would have been included when you included system files.

Finally got back to this project and it was easily successful. The USB Recovery drive with system files did the job as expected. Thank you.