Which clean installation tutorial to follow / everthing considered

A point has been reached where its necessary to sort out whether a stability issue is software vs hardware related. I've put aside for now the hardware troubleshooting and have turned the focus to whether its software related.

The OS boots and shuts down fine. There never were any major concerns with the OS and in fact, Win 10 has held in there fairly well ever since ver 1709 where only on some occasions there were some corrupted system files found and repaired by system file check/scannow or correcting some issues of cumulative updates failing with Repair Install with In-place Upgrades. Windows 10 was installed from a factory Dell image pre-installed. It also came with MS Office 2016 (paid subscription)

These are what I've been considering:

Clean Install Windows 10

Reset Windows 10

Fresh Start Windows 10

The Clean Install appears perhaps as the more prudent choice. Whether or not it potentially could risk the loss of Office 2016, that isn't mentioned in the tutorial. But the Fresh Start tutorial for Option two does list a warning about the Windows tool not being recommended by MS for that reason.

I have the product code for Office 2016. What I wouldn't want to run a risk of though is the potential loss of Office

One thing that drew my attention in the Clean Install tutorial is the recommendation to dis-connect the secondary HDD that's only used for my personal files. I'm assuming that would be a matter of just disconnecting the SATA drive power connector?

The reasons I've not mentioned describing the rather odd stability issue is mainly because of all the testing that's been performed already to date involving troubleshooting that entails more than what's worth using all the digital ink to cover. Also, I've seen no results that have yet proven thus far that replacing some components at this stage are entirely justifiable.

So basically, it's a matter of whether or not after the Clean Install tutorial is followed, I'll be posed with the problem of not being able to re-install Office. If so, would the Reset method with removing everything be the more prudent choice?

I've never needed nor have I ever seen a reason for having the Recovery partition and the Dell recovery partition

OEM PC: Dell model XPS 8930 tower, special edition
OS: Windows 10 Home, 21H2 OS build 19044.2130

System SSD partitions: Primary, System, MSR, Recovery, and Dell Recovery

BIOS: UEFI
Bitlocker: No

@Megahertz, I must thank you for each of those important pieces of valuable information.
I believe we're both talking about the Custom: Install Windows only (advanced) type of installation as shown in step 12

============

The Office 2016 you can easily download from MS. Tell us what version you want and I'll give you a download link

The MS Office Home and Business 2016 (U.S), version 16.0.15726.20174

Not being able to install Office again harkens back to 2019. At that time, I needed to change my MS account email address. That email change required contacting MS. They were the only one back then who could authorize the (changed) email address for my acct and also for Office 2016. I'll never forget what I went through. I have the new email address now associated with my MS acct and also the Office 2016 subscription. But it was one pain in the neck.

=============

If you don't want to use MS account, don't enable updates or connect to the internet during installation.

That's a point I forgot mentioning. I would prefer the clean install is set up to sign in with a local account. The tutorial explains in Step 23 how to proceed by saying to skip step 24 and go to step 25 to set up with a local account. So in Step 25, A), (the first two bullet points) for my Win Home version 21H2 may not work to allow setting up the local acct. in which case then it states, disconnect from the internet, and Re-start the Clean Install .

So If it does turn out where it may not work, is it correct to understand that you'll have to re-start the steps for a clean install all over from the beginning ?

After finishing the last step in the tutorial with the local account, the question is, don't I need to proceed to set up a MS account ? You're at the end of the tutorial at this point. A little direction here would be helpful. Its a bit sketchy about whether you need to set up a MS account

- - - Updated - - -

======================================
@dalchina,

The Recovery partition supports advanced startup options - boot to
- command prompt
- Safe Mode
- offline System Restore
- Startup Repair
etc

It also supports Automatic Repair.

Without it to do those you would need to boot from a Win 10 install disk.

Sorry I worded my comment differently than how it was meant to be interpreted.
I meant to say I've never heard a good argumentative debate for needing the Dell recovery partition. I've accessed the Windows recovery partition many times. A need to have both, I've never seen a reason.

Berton said:

The Dell recovery puts the computer back to the day it shipped, will wipe anything done after receipt/setup. They included a small Dell program that allowed creating a USB drive for recovery of the original setup, both are stored against the possibility of disaster.

I don't know whether we're talking about the same thing. For the Dell recovery partition I mentioned, it was in reference about Dell Support Assist OS Recovery which is the necessary partition if you wanted to use the Dell SA OS recovery tool operation. I came to learn (years ago) there were some certain versions which would work for the OS recovery operation, some which were questionable, and some older versions which would not.


The version on my system required the Support Assist tool and another app which I cannot say for certain any longer what it was called (but perhaps it might have been called the Support Assist OS recovery Plug-In). Years ago, out of curiosity, I installed Dell Support Assist and also the Dell Plug-In update, and after a successful install, I received later an error that the Dell SA OS Plug-in had failed to automatically update. Dell said that the older version of SA OS recovery I had was not able to be updated and that had been the reason for the failure for the OS recovery plug-in not being able to update.

If you are going to omit something crucial like the actual issue/s itself then you are only making the matter worse. Essentially you are asking what method to use for clean boot but that might not even be the remedy to the underlying problem. The only way you will truly diagnose the issue is if you rely all the parameters and what you have already tried.

TBH this whole thread is flawed. People cannot really help you properly if you are going to omit something crucial like the actual issue at hand.

- - - Updated - - -

Jaguwaar20 said:

The reasons I've not mentioned describing the rather odd stability issue is mainly because of all the testing that's been performed already to date involving troubleshooting that entails more than what's worth using all the digital ink to cover. Also, I've seen no results that have yet proven thus far that replacing some components at this stage are entirely justifiable.

...

- - - Updated - - -

The analogy would be like looking for a missing person but we are looking 200 miles to far in one direction because someone omitted key evidence that would suggest totally different search parameters,

its no different here people can only work with what you rely to them so if you omit crucial information then that is going to shape how people offer advice in this case you feel like taking the long way round.

"I'd suggest getting a new system disk and removing the current one"
=====================

That was another next step in the works of hardware component testing I was planning to perform if a clean install didn't produce the results in correcting the stability issue.

As for a system backup to an external drive, I also had planned to perform a full BU before performing the clean install

Jaguwaar20 said:

"I'd suggest getting a new system disk and removing the current one"
=====================

That was another next step in the works of hardware component testing I was planning to perform if a clean install didn't produce the results in correcting the stability issue.

As for a system backup to an external drive, I also had planned to perform a full BU before performing the clean install

But this is all based on a whim? i mean you are asking for help but at the same time omitting relevant information. Did you run chkdsk? this alone would tell you if you needed to replace the Hard drive or not. Instead of just guessing

Again maybe you should rethink your approach because atm this whole thread is flawed and the entire search party is 200 miles to far over atm.

People can only work with what information you give them, at the moment anyone's guess is as good as yours.

- - - Updated - - -

Instability problems could be many factors i am not sure why you are fixated on clean boot for maybe because its a catch all and you are not really sure what is happening with the PC?

Again if you are going to omit the actual issues you are experiencing with the computer then that does not help the cause at all. Computers are a 10 step program so if you leave out relevant information then all it does is make it harder for people to help diagnose the issue.

Instability problems can be caused by some of the following.

- Faulty Hardware
- Power issues
- Grounding issues
- Incorrect drivers
- Outdated drivers
- Problematic apps/code
- i am sure there is other areas too but these are the ones that come to mind.

Clean boot may fix some of these issues but not all of them. The best course of events would be to narrow down your potential cause for the issue/s you wont get that sort of help here by omitting information.