Windows 10 Installation - Help!

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  1. LightSadge
    Posts : 6
    Windows
       New #1

    Windows 10 Installation - Help!


    Hi!

    Long story short, I have an old (7y.o.) ASUS laptop running on Win 8 that suddenly stopped working 5 months ago. Tried several things including a bootable USB for Win 8.1, but nothing worked. I couldn't get past windows startup repair. Checked diskpart via CMD prompt and found that while healthy and online, the partitions of my HDD were RAW. I was not able to make any changes in diskpart. Neither format, clean or delete the partitions. Also couldnt chkdsk. Fast forward many weeks, today I tried the bootable USB for Windows 10 AND voila! It led me into the Windows 10 Installation Setup and I am currently in the "Where do you want to install windows" section. I saw the 6 same partitions and took a bold move a attempted to delete the 20gb recovery partition, which was successful.

    My question now is what to do here. I have no problem with deleting the files. I assume they are lost anyway because of the RAW format and I already have a backup of my crucial documents. Should I just delete all partitions and create a new one of only a few, or none?

    I would like the laptop to work fine. That is all I want.

    Thanks,

    LightSadge
      My Computer
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  3. dalchina
    Posts : 42,963
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #2

    Hi, a clean install of Win 10 is normally to unallocated space.

    You delete all existing partitions which were created when Windows was installed. (= you can keep any you subsequently created). See around steps 13/14 in the following:

    Tutorial:
    Clean Install Windows 10

    Recommended:
    Check the disk early on e.g. HD Tune v2.55 (free) Health and error scan tabs.

    Strongly recommended by members here again and again: start routinely using disk imaging to a large enough external disk or storage medium using e.g. Macrium Reflect (free).

    Start as soon as you can, and BEFORE you install 306 programs (example!).
    You can use the images to recover to a previous good state after disaster, to a new disk, even (probably) to a new and different PC. And they are a full backup.

    Caveat: it's an old laptop. It wasn't designed for Win 10. It is your responsibility therefore to resolve any issues arising e.g. missing or incompatible drivers. Or, you might be lucky...

    Plan where you're going to keep your data- better on a separate partition- so not affected by O/S maintenance.
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  4. LightSadge
    Posts : 6
    Windows
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Thank you Dalchina!

    Can I create a second partition after installing windows or is it better to partition it before?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Also do you know if the preinstalled windows product key that came with the laptop will still be accessible? Thanks!
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  6. dalchina
    Posts : 42,963
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #4

    It's your choice.. I'd do it after installing Win 10.

    I believe Step 14 shows you have the option to create a partition then- I've never used it so can't say more.
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  7. idgat
    Posts : 2,137
    Windows 11 Pro (latest update ... forever anal)
       New #5

    Delete all partitions and install on a totally unallocated drive.

    AFTER installation, resize the OS/system partition to suit, and create other partitions as required.
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  8. dalchina
    Posts : 42,963
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #6

    Delete all partitions and install on a totally unallocated drive.
    - don't have to .. imagine the user has data partition D: and wants to keep it..

    Advising someone to delete all partitions should they not have a backup could end in tears. (Not relevant in this case, it seems).
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  9. LightSadge
    Posts : 6
    Windows
    Thread Starter
       New #7

    So, I was going good. Had deleted all partitions but the System and Primary partitions could not be deleted or formatted. Now after attempted boot I have no partitions. Just a 0.0 Mb unallocated disk. Is this fixable? Thanks.
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  10. bobkn
    Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       New #8

    LightSadge said:
    So, I was going good. Had deleted all partitions but the System and Primary partitions could not be deleted or formatted. Now after attempted boot I have no partitions. Just a 0.0 Mb unallocated disk. Is this fixable? Thanks.
    How did you do that?

    When doing a clean installation, I boot the PC from the installation medium (USB drive) and delete the existing partitions on the target drive from within the installer. I then let the installer automatically create and format new partitions.
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  12. LightSadge
    Posts : 6
    Windows
    Thread Starter
       New #9

    Like I said, I was deleting partition by partition, but the only 2 that could not get deleted or formatted were the System and Primary partitions. As it was late at night, I went back and powered off, but today it doesn't even show in diskpart.
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  13. dalchina
    Posts : 42,963
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       New #10

    Perhaps you need to check your disk... (as I mentioned in post #2 assuming you might be able to install Win 10)

    You can do that by booting from a live boot disk (independently of your internal disk) and then run a suitable program.

    E.g.
    Bob.Omb's Modified Win10PEx64 - Best Rescue Disk 2018
    Toolkit Item: Kyhi’s Rescue Disk – Win10.Guru

    The latter includes HDTune for example- Health and Error Scan tabs.

    You will have to make sure your drive has a drive letter.
      My Computers
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