I can't boot from any media to do the clean install

Kari said:

This tutorial shows you how to perform a full clean install, with partitioning options wiping the disk clean if so preferred, when you can't boot from DVD or USB: Clean Install Windows 10 without DVD or USB Flash Drive Installation Upgrade Tutorials

Kari

That's ingenious - thanks.

In my case, the USB works but my old motherboard can't boot from USB sticks. Can't I just run setup.exe directly from the USB stick while in Windows? I would use the setup.exe in the Sources folder (<Disk>:\Sources\Setup.exe) which someone mentioned allows a custom install.

Provided setup.exe is run from any source other than the C: drive, you appear to be at liberty to wipe the OS drive of unneeded partitions and perform a clean install. If correct, then I don't need to mess about booting from a DVD or USB drive.

I am sure it will work. I have done it numerous times with Win7.

It is also the same way many oem recovery partitions work,

Steve C said:

That's ingenious - thanks.

Kari said:

Yes, you can use \Sources\Setup.exe on install media starting it from Windows desktop but if doing so, you do not have partitioning options available. This means that hard disk will not and cannot be cleaned and formatted, thus it will naturally also take longer than a real clean install because your existing Windows installation will be first moved to Windows.old folder before new installation can start. This can really take some time depending on size of existing installation, how much data there is to move before actual installation can start.

The tutorial I linked to shows how to do a "real" clean install when booting from DVD or USB is not an option, with partitioning options.

Kari

Thanks. I'm not quite understanding why I need the partition for the installation files if the USB ports work. Could I boot to the command prompt then run setup.exe from the USB stick without needing to create a separate partition for the installation files? I could even copy the drivers to the USB stick, although I don't think I'll need them.

Kari said:

The tutorial I linked to was made out of my own personal needs, as I explain in the very beginning of it:

   Information

Sometime ago I had an interesting dilemma: A Windows tablet simply refused to upgrade from Windows 10 version 1607, the Anniversary Update. Due my own actions the only USB port was broken, not recognizing any USB flash drives. I had no SD cards available and even if I had found one, Windows installation can't be booted from SD card. In addition, to get more storage space I had removed factory restore partition and extended C: drive to that freed space.

I wanted to clean install wiping the hard disk (removing and recreating Windows partitions). I knew from earlier experience that when clean installed, although Windows 10 usually is pretty good in finding and installing correct drivers, setup would be unable to find correct network drivers for this device (a tablet with Intel Atom CPU). These drivers would need to be manually installed after the installation. Otherwise the tablet would be just a worthless brick, a Windows device without network / Internet access, no way to add and install them and therefore unable to install rest of the drivers.

Short: I had to find a way to install without any external media, and be sure installers for network drivers would be available after installation.

Of course in your case when your PC can read USB and you already have install files on it, you can skip the part of copying install files. There's no need for that. Just boot to Command Prompt and run setup from USB, using the Setup.exe on root of it.

The same with copying driver installers as told in tutorial, that part of the tutorial is only to be sure that if there's no way to use external USB device to transfer device drivers after installation in case Windows cannot install network drivers and therefore can't find network, you can at least install network drivers to connect to Internet to download rest of the drivers.

Kari

Thanks. I booted to the command prompt but of course I'm still running a 32 bit version of windows and setup.exe won't clean install the 64 bit version of Windows. I need to boot from a DVD running a 64 bit recovery environment or find a way of getting the DVD created by the Creation Tool to boot. Back to square one!

Kari said:

@Steve C is your PC BIOS or UEFI?

It's an old non-UEFI BIOS.

To recap:

1. I want to clean install Windows 10 x64 over the current Windows x32 installation
2. My old PC doesn't boot from USB sticks nor does it boot from DVDs made by the Media Creation Tool
3. PLOP Boot Manager doesn't work on the PC for some reason
4. Restarting to a command prompt to run setup.exe for a 64 bit installation fails since the PC is still running 32 bit Windows

I've found this cunning solution:

1. I can boot the Windows 8 x64 installation DVD I bought in 2012!
2. Select Repair Your Computer
3. This takes me to a command prompt from where I can run setup.exe from the USB stick or Windows 10 DVD. I have to run the setup.exe from the Sources folder else the Windows 8 setup.exe runs.
4. Windows 10 x64 setup.exe runs and I can choose Custom Installation from where I can clean the disk and proceed with the Windows 10 installation

I'll do the installation tomorrow since I've spent most of today working out the above. I still can't work out why DVDs produced by the Media Creation Tool won't boot on old PCs.