Clean Install Win 10 - What Version?

Hello Forum,

I'm preparing to perform a clean install on my HP Spectre notebook. I was looking at the Media Creation Tool and the Microsoft website, and it appears that a clean install will install the latest version of Windows 10. That appears to be v20H2.

I don't want to install the latest version. I'd prefer to install v1909, because HP Support hasn't posted updated device drivers yet for v2004.

How do you install a version of Win 10 other than v2004 or v20H2?

Regards

There is the Heidoc Windows ISO download tool:
Microsoft Windows and Office ISO Download Tool

There is the techbench website:
TechBench by WZT (v4.1.1)

And there is UUP Dump:
UUP dump

Thanks, do these Win 10 downloads come with bloatware?

HP Support offers a Win 10 media to restore your HP computer, but I suspect it's loaded with all the HP bloatware that came installed on my notebook. Rather than spend time removing all the bloatware, I'd prefer to avoid it in the first place.

My SSD has three partitions. One is a recovery partition for reset. Will the Win 10 ISO recreate the three partitions? I intend to remove all the existing partitions for clean disk prior to the Win 10 clean install.

tjg79 said:

Thanks, do these Win 10 downloads come with bloatware?

HP Support offers a Win 10 media to restore your HP computer, but I suspect it's loaded with all the HP bloatware that came installed on my notebook. Rather than spend time removing all the bloatware, I'd prefer to avoid it in the first place.

My SSD has three partitions. One is a recovery partition for reset. Will the Win 10 ISO recreate the three partitions? I intend to remove all the existing partitions for clean disk prior to the Win 10 clean install.

When I used media creation tool, no bloatware was there.
So if your using a MS source for the install, then you wont get bloatware.
Another interesting thing, even though I told it to wipe the disk and update windows, AFAIK, several desktop items remained. Like some malwarebytes log files, shortcuts, etc... got preserved.

Standard procedure would be to boot from the installation media and delete ALL partitions early on in that procedure when you are offered that choice.......leaving only "unallocated space".

The installer will then create partitions as it sees fit.

No "bloatware" that isn't native to Windows itself.

Before you wipe out all the partitions on the computer, it's a good idea to backup drivers in case you need them after a clean install:
Backup and Restore Device Drivers in Windows 10

I like to make the Windows 10 installation USB flash drive on a 16 GB flash drive and then just create a Drivers folder on it and export the drivers to it.

Paul Black said:

Hello @sdowney717,

Very strange!

That sounds like an In-Place-Upgrade.

Might have been, I was surprised to see the desktop icons there.

Anyways it worked. And none of my files and folders were left elsewhere on the disk, I had to copy all of them back on the disk. It was a blank slate look, no downloads, documents, etc.. were left behind. No folders I had created to hold my chart files. This PC was before the update, a very minimal install, so not terribly difficult to get the files back on the drive. So i was very surprised to see desktop icons, but things like links were all white, so dead.

Here is my desktop snip now a few days since the update, all the white icons are what was there on the first boot, and are still dead links too the prior drive contents
I have since added new programs so they show up normally.