How do I reformat entire computer?

I'm having performance issues with my 5-year old laptop. It takes about 7-10 minutes to boot. It also is bloated and has much that I no longer need. I decided to reformat and start fresh. I've made a Macrium disk image and have windows rescue and boot disks for after i reformat the computer.

How do I reformat?? I go to Disk Management and right-click Disk 0 and it says this disk can't be reformatted. I search here and find an old/closed thread that says that to reformat you need to convert to dynamic disc. I did that. Right-click on Disk 0 and there is not a format command.

How do I reformat my computer so that I can get a fresh start by reinstalling W10?

Hi folks

simple
Boot Macrium and click on the command mode (or boot KYHI's rescue disk - on this Forum.

type following commands in :

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK xx where xx is the disk nr you want to work with.
CLEAN
CONVERT GPT
CREATE PARTITION EFI SIZE=100
FORMAT QUICK FS=FAT32
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
FORMAT QUICK FS=NTFS
ASSIGN
EXIT

Now you've got an empty disk to install windows on .

If you don't have GPT/EFI boot then don't create the EFI partition or CONVERT GPT. Most computers these days boot EFI and if you have any HDD's bigger than 2TB you will need GPT anyway.

Cheers
jimbo

lbeck said:

I'm having performance issues with my 5-year old laptop. It takes about 7-10 minutes to boot. It also is bloated and has much that I no longer need....

...How do I reformat my computer so that I can get a fresh start by reinstalling W10?

You don't have to reformat and install Windows from scratch to get a 'fresh start'. There is a is a fresh start function built into Windows 10. Read this tutorial and see if it meets your needs.

Using Fresh start lets you perform a clean reinstallation and update of Windows while keeping your personal data and most Windows settings intact. Fresh start will remove most of your apps from your device. In some cases, a clean installation may improve your device's startup and shutdown experience, memory usage, Store apps performance, browsing experience, and battery life.

This tutorial will show you how to use Fresh start to get a clean up-to-date reinstallation of Windows 10.

Fresh Start Windows 10 | Tutorials

There is no need to create the partitions manually with diskpart, or convert the drive to GPT.

diskpart
list disk
select disk # <- replace # with the drive you want to erase/install Windows to
clean
exit
exit

Then during the install of Windows, after you select custom install, just highlight the unallocated space on the disk and click next. Let Windows setup do the partitioning for you and it will also use GPT if it was booted in UEFI mode. To get to the command prompt to do the diskpart command, you can boot the computer from your Windows 10 installation media and press shift + F10 when the first screen comes up.

If you want a clean disk with no extra partitions, and you do not want to keep bloatware that came from the factory, I suggest a clean install from Windows 10 installation media created from the tool Microsoft provides:
Download Windows 10

Well somehow I've taken a wrong road or few. I reinstalled windows from a USB flash drive constructed using one of the tenforums tutorials. This went swimmingly and I answered the plethora of questions to get W10 installed. What I've wound up with is a new copy of W10 with what appears to be all of my data reinstalled and my boot disk is now a dynamic rather than a basic disk. Looking further for help to get my Disk 0 with all partitions basic I received instructions to:

1. Back up my data
2. delete the dynamic partitions
3. make the partitions basic (I didn't get that far)

Well I'm not interested in keeping my data so I went to step 2 and I get the message in Disk Management that the partition can't be deleted.

So now I'm back to where I was when I began my effort to reformat my entire computer except I now have dynamic rather than basic disks to work with. I don't know what that means except that I probably want basic disks.

I'm currently pursuing Option 1 at How to Start Fresh with Clean up-to-date Installation of Windows 10 This apparently goes down a different road to reinstall windows 10 and still kindly leaves your data intact - which I'll delete if the process gives me basic disks rather than dynamic disks.

I never thought it would be so difficult to simply wipe my computer clean and start from scratch. Any advice will certainly be appreciated.

lbeck said:

ADDED LATER:

1. Booted from USB
2. did not get the screen shown in the tutorial
3. Options from USB Boot = Choose an option -> troubleshoot -> reset this PC -> remove everything-> all drives-> fully clean the drive -> There was a problem resetting your PC

You did not boot from the USB flash drive. You ran setup.exe from the flash drive, or possibly the recovery menu from booting from the hard drive.