How can I do a full reinstall of Windows on my laptop?

Wow, thanks for the great tutorial, I'm going to try it today. Before I do that I just wanted to make sure I understand everything.

- Under the "Here's How:" from the guide by Brink that is posted above by Word Man there are two links:

1. If you have not already, you will need to create a bootable Windows 10 installation USB.
3. Boot from the USB flash drive on your computer.

Do I follow Option 1 on both?

- I download the media creation tool to the laptop and it'll install Win10 on my flash drive, it'll format like you said. Can I export the drivers to that same flash drive after doing the command you posted or do the drivers need to be on a separate flash drive? I have a 128gb Sandisk drive.

- After Windows is on the flash drive, I put the drivers on it, then boot to the flash drive to start the install process? Over at Reddit a Toshiba user said to plug the flash drive in, reboot Windows and press F12 quickly and it'll list items to boot from.

- Do I need to worry about UEFI(no idea what it is). I have a thread over at Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/4aopqj/what_is_the_easiest_way_to_do_a_clean_install_of/

The one gent said this:
"When it comes to UEFI vs CMS... well, basically UEFI is newer and supported by Windows 10, and I know that my Toshiba laptop wont boot from a Windows 10 USB stick unless EUFI is enabled. If the laptop can boot and install from the USB stick, then you're good to go."

Again, thanks for the help I don't mean to ask so many questions but I feel like I'm working on an airplane or something lol. I appreciate you working with this noob. I probably shouldn't have made threads on this in so many places as I have people telling me different ways of doing it.

NavyLCDR said:

1. The most universal flash drive that just works, in my experience, has been Option 1. Download the media creation tool. Select the option for downloading an installation for another pc. Then select the option for USB flash drive. Let the media creation tool do all the work.

2. You don't need to do anything with the flash drive first. The MCT will erase it, format it to fat32, and write the Windows 10 installation media to it.

3. When you get ready to boot the laptop from the flash drive, there are several ways to do that. From the power icon off the start icon (like you would normally shutdown), hold down shift key and click restart. That will put you into the Windows Recovery Environment. Keep selecting the advanced and/or troubleshooting option until you see an option that says something about booting from a device. With the flash drive inserted, click that option, and you will get a list of what to reboot from. Select USB and you should reboot into the flash drive.

Or, hold down shift key and click shutdown. That bypasses fast startup. Then, with the flash drive inserted when you power on your computer there will be a key you have to repeatedly press before the Windows logo comes up - might be ESC key, F2, F11 - depends on the hardware, you will have to look in the manual for it. That will take you to a list of boot devices to select from.

4. To save your drivers before you re-install vanilla Windows, I recommend using a 16gb or 32gb flash drive to create the Windows install media with. Then AFTER you create the Windows install media on it, you can use it to store your drivers. Let's say flash drive gets assigned drive letter E: when you insert it. Create a folder on the flash drive, I like to call my DriversW10. Right click start icon, click command prompt (admin). That will open an elevated ("run as administrator") command prompt. Then you will run:
DISM /online /export-driver /destination:E:\DriversW10

The path in red will be the path to the folder you created on the flash drive. That will save all the hardware specific drivers you need that don't come with vanilla Windows.

5. It is a very good idea to use Macrium Reflect Free to create an image of your entire hard drive onto an external hard drive just in case something goes wrong, you can go back to exactly where it was before. You will need a Macrium Rescue disk to restore the image so make sure to make one. USB flash drive, DVD or CD works for that.

6. Once you boot from the Windows 10 flash drive, it should read the Windows 10 product key in bios and not ask you what version you want or for a product key. Select custom install, delete every partition on the hard drive - this is irreversible, it will erase everything on the hard drive Toshiba put on it. Then install to the unallocated space and let Windows do the work of creating the partitions that it wants.

7. After you get installed, open device manager. Look for any "unknown devices". Select upgrade drivers, browse my computer, point it to the DriversW10 folder you created and it will install the drivers from there. Also any hardware with exclamation points for not working right can also be attempted to fix the same way.

That should be it. Good luck!

budmonster said:

- Under the "Here's How:" from the guide by Brink that is posted above by Word Man there are two links:

1. If you have not already, you will need to create a bootable Windows 10 installation USB.
3. Boot from the USB flash drive on your computer.

Do I follow Option 1 on both?

Not sure exactly what you are asking here. I recommend to use the option to make the Windows 10 installation flash drive directly using the Media Creation Tool. It is much simpler and you get a flash drive that works more universally if you just let Media Creation Tool make it for you instead of downloading an ISO file and making it yourself. You won't boot the computer from the flash drive right away - you boot from the flash only when you have finished backing up what you want to save and are ready to start the clean install.

budmonster said:

- I download the media creation tool to the laptop and it'll install Win10 on my flash drive, it'll format like you said. Can I export the drivers to that same flash drive after doing the command you posted or do the drivers need to be on a separate flash drive? I have a 128gb Sandisk drive.

You can export the drivers to the same flash driver AFTER Media Creation Tool puts the Windows install files on it. When Media Creation Tool makes the flash drive it will erase whatever is on it, that's why you export the drivers to it AFTER Media Creation Tool is finished. I would not recommend using a flash drive over 32 GB because Media Creation Tool will only format the first 32 GB of the flash drive and the rest will be essentially wasted unless you manually reconfigure the drive to use the entire 128 GB. So, as an alternative, you can use a cheaper 8 GB flash drive for the Media Creation Tool to use, and then use your 128 GB flash drive for driver and other file storage that you want to keep. You can export the drivers to the same Windows install flash drive - but it is not required to do so, a second flash drive will work just as well.

budmonster said:

- After Windows is on the flash drive, I put the drivers on it, then boot to the flash drive to start the install process? Over at Reddit a Toshiba user said to plug the flash drive in, reboot Windows and press F12 quickly and it'll list items to boot from.

That would be the basic process, yes. With the flash drive inserted, either click restart from the power icon from the Windows start button, or hold down shift while you click shutdown. When the computer restarts, immediately start pressing F12 to get the list of devices to boot from.

budmonster said:

- Do I need to worry about UEFI(no idea what it is). I have a thread over at Reddit: What is the easiest way to do a clean install of Win10 for someone with little PC knowledge? : techsupport

The one gent said this:
"When it comes to UEFI vs CMS... well, basically UEFI is newer and supported by Windows 10, and I know that my Toshiba laptop wont boot from a Windows 10 USB stick unless EUFI is enabled. If the laptop can boot and install from the USB stick, then you're good to go."

UEFI should not be a problem because the flash drive created by Media Creation Tool is compatible with UEFI. If for some reason UEFI booting from the flash drive fails, you will likely just get a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. Then you just have to hold down the power key to turn the computer off, remove the flash drive, restart the computer and you will go back into your old Windows and we can go from there, if we have to.

There's a whole bunch of different ways to install Windows 10. I'm trying to tell you the least technical way that works more often when other methods fail. The main downside to this method is not having files readily available later on for advanced troubleshooting, but most people won't do the kind of advanced troubleshooting those files are needed for and they can be downloaded later if needed anyway.

Bump 👊🏼

If you have blank DVDs then make a Windows 10 installation DVD from the ISO file and use that. Make an image of the entire hard drive to the external hard drive, export your drivers to the external hard drive. Make a Macrium Reflect Rescue DVD. Then boot from the Windows 10 install DVD to do your clean install with.

NavyLCDR said:

If you have blank DVDs then make a Windows 10 installation DVD from the ISO file and use that. Make an image of the entire hard drive to the external hard drive, export your drivers to the external hard drive. Make a Macrium Reflect Rescue DVD. Then boot from the Windows 10 install DVD to do your clean install with.

Damn, I wasn't even thinking, my laptop doesn't have a DVD drive, only a slot of SD storage. Using the Media Creation Tool I put Windows 10 on the 128GB USB flash drive I have but like you said it formatted it to 32GB or so. Other than that I have the 2TB external hdd & two 16GB MicroSD cards. My other flash drivers are to small use. Any ideas or am I forced to buy another large flash drive?

Also, are you saying I need to create a Rescue backup and also an Image backup in Reflect? What is the difference?

Again, thank for the help.

You need both the image of your hard drive created by Macrium Reflect onto the external hard drive and a Macrium Reflect Rescue Disk created either on a USB flash drive or DVD. The Macrium rescue disk should fit on a 1 GB flash drive - and definitely on 2 GB. The image is just a backup file, and it will be 80-90% in size of the used space of your hard drive as there is not need to backup free space. You cannot boot from the backup image file. The Rescue Disk is what you would boot the computer from in order to restore the image back to the hard drive (or a new hard drive) should a catastrophic failure occur.

Most computers will not boot from MicroSD cards, so that's why you can't use them for the Rescue disk or the Windows install disk.

Flash drives are pretty cheap - you can get a 2-pack of 8 GB drives at Walmart for less than $10.

I finally had time to do everything. Before I go ahead and try install a vanilla copy of Win10, can you check the screenshots I took just to double check that I've covered everything and it all looks correct?

- This is the Rescue Media, I was able to fit it on a 2GB flash drive like you said, it only came out to 244MB which seems kind of low?: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
- Here is the Image Backup of my current laptop on the 2TB external hdd, the image is around 21GB. I was only supposed to image the C Drive correct? It looks like there's 3 other partitions: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
- I used the Media Creation Tool exe to put Windows 10 on the 128GB flash drive which was formatted to around 30GB. The Win10 img was almost 6GB: Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet
- I did that export command that you wrote for saving my drivers, I put them in a DriversW10 folder on both the Image Backup(ext hdd) & the Media Creation(128GB flash drive). I didn't know exactly which one to put it on.

NavyLCDR said:

You need both the image of your hard drive created by Macrium Reflect onto the external hard drive and a Macrium Reflect Rescue Disk created either on a USB flash drive or DVD. The Macrium rescue disk should fit on a 1 GB flash drive - and definitely on 2 GB. The image is just a backup file, and it will be 80-90% in size of the used space of your hard drive as there is not need to backup free space. You cannot boot from the backup image file. The Rescue Disk is what you would boot the computer from in order to restore the image back to the hard drive (or a new hard drive) should a catastrophic failure occur.

Most computers will not boot from MicroSD cards, so that's why you can't use them for the Rescue disk or the Windows install disk.

Flash drives are pretty cheap - you can get a 2-pack of 8 GB drives at Walmart for less than $10.

You should have imaged your whole disk, not just the OS partition. The first partition on your drive is where the boot files are. And I would boot from the Rescue USB to make sure it works.