Issue doing a clean install of Win 10 on a laptop

KingCRZ · 06 Sep 2016

Hello,

When I purchased my laptop it had Windows 8 on it. I did the free upgrade to Windows 10 with no issues. Lately my laptop has been giving me issues so I did a factory reset back to Windows 8. I downloaded the Windows 10 media creation tool to a USB drive.

I made the mistake of saving the media creation tool to the USB and running the program from the USB instead of booting from it. It appeared the install was going smooth then the PC locked up at the HP screen. It sat there for a few hours and I did a hard reset to restart the install, it only boots to the HP screen and doesn't go any further. I can reset the PC and hit the ESC key to access the BIOS and other prompts.

I tried booting from the USB stick but when I try to do a fresh install it says there was an interruption and I have to hit close to go back to the main menu to and start all over again. I can get to the part where it asks if I want to do an Upgrade of Windows or Custom: Install Windows only (advanced). When I click on Custom I have a ton of partitions in there.

My question is, can I remove all of those partitions and start fresh. I already backed up all of the data I need from the laptop. I just want to get Windows 10 installed again and get it back to a place where I can use it for browsing the net and creating Office documents. I also wrote down my product key before I did this process.

dalchina · 06 Sep 2016

Hi, if you have full backups and you've already reset your laptop, then you clearly need to do a clean install.

To clean install '10 having already had '10 installed on your PC it is not necessary to reinstall '8, so you can format your disk, assuming there are no data or other partitions you wish to keep. MS should automatically activate it.

You do have to decide if for any reason you wish to keep the manufacturer's Win 8 recovery partition.

Kbird · 06 Sep 2016

Yes , just clean the Disk and Reinstall Clean

this Thread is similar , see cleaning instructions here ...

clean install of Windows 10 fails - Windows 10 Forums

KingCRZ · 07 Sep 2016

Thanks for your help, it worked like a charm. The laptop is running 100% better with a clean install now.

dalchina · 07 Sep 2016

Great- now, before sthg else breaks, use disk imaging routinely to back it up, now, and update before any major change, after any major change, and periodically. Thus you can restore to a previously working state without technical help- even if your disk fails. Also is a full backup.

E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + its boot disk + external storage medium.
(And congratulations if you already use this!)

KingCRZ · 07 Sep 2016

Thanks for the tips, I haven't been doing that but I will start. I hope to get at least two more years out of this laptop. It will be a solid touch screen laptop for family use in the future.