Reinstall Windows from a Clean Formatted Hard Disc Drive

Hello




I have a big question to ask. What I want to do is

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Hello Members,

Sorry about the above message. I accidently pushed the enter key too early. Anyway what I have is a refurbished HP Notebook, that is only 2 years old. What I want to do is completely wipe the hard drive including partitions. I then want to reformat that drive install a very fresh copy of Windows 10 Home, which I have a copy on a USB. I need some step-by-step instructions, taking into account that I am an intermeadient user of Windows 10 (in my option a very unfriendly Operating system. Those that reply will be most gratefully appreciated.

Make sure you have the latest ISO boot from that delete all parition and let windows make all the paritions it needs

This is a clean install tutorial:

Clean Install Windows 10


https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
Download Windows 10 ISO File
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10

dalchina said:

The question many people ask is 'do I need a key?' - no, activation should be automatic as licensing data is held on MS's activation servers.

That's assuming you want exactly the same edition as you had before.

Following @Steve C's advice about using disk imaging, here's how I protect myself when configuring a new system:

a. Clean install
b. as early as possible create my first (base, largest) disk image - on a large external drive - and create a disk imaging task
c. make changes e.g. installing programs- and keep a simple text record of each change
d. update my disk image (e.g. use the disk imaging task and create a new differential image)
e. Repeat (c), (d) at intervals until a Win 10 upgrade
f. After an upgrade start again from (b)

Thus if something goes wrong or you make a bad mistake you can readily retrieve the situation.

Having disk images can help avoid the need for a clean install in some cases, and means you have a full backup.

After doing a clean install and archiving that state, I also frequently make new incremental / differential images as I configure Windows and install programs since its possible to screw up the new installation.

dalchina said:

The question many people ask is 'do I need a key?' - no, activation should be automatic as licensing data is held on MS's activation servers.

That's assuming you want exactly the same edition as you had before.

Following @Steve C's advice about using disk imaging, here's how I protect myself when configuring a new system:

a. Clean install
b. as early as possible create my first (base, largest) disk image - on a large external drive - and create a disk imaging task
c. make changes e.g. installing programs- and keep a simple text record of each change
d. update my disk image (e.g. use the disk imaging task and create a new differential image)
e. Repeat (c), (d) at intervals until a Win 10 upgrade
f. After an upgrade start again from (b)

Thus if something goes wrong or you make a bad mistake you can readily retrieve the situation.

Having disk images can help avoid the need for a clean install in some cases, and means you have a full backup.

I´m not a fan of incremental or differential backup methods, always prefer to go the full way. But nice strategy!