Best Wiping & Installing Win10 Method for HP Laptop

Hello Everyone and good day to you!!!!

I see some articles out there here, but not sure if it answers what I am looking for.

I just bought an HP laptop that I want to wipe completely clean with no software etc. installed and then reinstall from an ISO DVD I created with the most updated Windows 10. I usually on my desktop PC I use Iolo Drive Scrubber that is roughly10 years old and it works great, but unfortunately the laptop won't read it.

Which method would be great for laptops for what I described above? By doing a Refresh in the settings on the laptop would that be a viable option or would be using like Darik Boot and Nuke be the best option etc?

Thank you very much for all your help and sorry if I am repeating a possible question from previous threads.

You don't need 3rd party software to clean the disk. Follow Brink's tutorial on Clean Install from usb/dvd. Use Step 13 to delete all partitions. You'll then install Windows to one big unallocated space and let it create it's own partitions. Just be aware, if the HP came with Windows 10, you will lose it's Recovery partition unless you copied it to usb, using 'create recovery drive'.

Brink said:

Hey Jeff,
You could use the same clean install method from the tutorial below.
Clean Install Windows 10
Just be sure to install the same edition of Windows 10 that your product key is for.
I would also recommend to write down your current product just to be safe in case needed during the clean install.
Find Product Key in Windows 10

Hey Brink! If that was you helping me earlier. Thank you very much!!! Thank you for your response here I really appreciate it.

If I were to do it by the method you recommended (This is the OCD side of me) will it write all 00000's on the drive or will there be things left over from this clean install method? If I did it by the refresh method in the recovery part of the settings will that write 0000's as well or even doing it that way, will it do a really good job of starting over?

Thank you!

mrgeek said:

You don't need 3rd party software to clean the disk. Follow Brink's tutorial on Clean Install from usb/dvd. Use Step 13 to delete all partitions. You'll then install Windows to one big unallocated space and let it create it's own partitions. Just be aware, if the HP came with Windows 10, you will lose it's Recovery partition unless you copied it to usb, using 'create recovery drive'.

Hey mrgeek!

Thank you very much for your help. I really appreciate it. That's usually the way I do it on my desktop PC. So, I will do the same on the laptop. The recovery drive I will have to take a look at. Is it easy to recover or find the HP software online so I can reinstall those?

Thank you again!

Brink said:

Both methods won't do a secure erase of the hard drive.
However, the clean install method I recommended will delete the drive until it's unallocated, then format and install over it. This would make it very unlikely to be able to recover anything from the drive.
You will be able to download any HP software you wanted to reinstall directly from HP for the model number of your PC.

Ok, thank you! I guess in this case I wouldn't need to do a secure erase because it is brand new, but in the future when I want to do a secure erase, any recommendations?

Great, I will check the HP website, which I thought about earlier.

sn00ker said:

mrje1 before you do have you looked into how the warranty works with hp ? You just might not want to do what you're thinking to do . Before you do anything I think you should first make a full backup image of that drive in case you need it for warranty reasons

Thank you very much sn00ker for your help. Ok, I'll check on that. Great info. Thank you again!