How To Reinstall Windows 10 Clean
While there’s nothing to stop you selling your PC with the contents of its hard drive intact, it’s a very bad idea. Apart from the fact that you’ll be giving the new owner access to all of your files and other personal information, you’ll also be selling any software that’s still installed. Even if this was legal (which it usually isn’t), that means you won’t be able to install the same software on your new PC — not without breaking the law, anyway. So the solution is to wipe your PC and restore it to a factory fresh state, with nothing but the Windows operating system installed. This, incidentally, is something you might also want to do when you want to reinstall Windows from scratch to give your computer a new lease of life — getting rid of years’ worth of old stuff can work wonders.
This process has changed a bit with the arrival of and there are two ways to do it, depending on what you want to achieve. We’ll cover both. Getting ready Step 1: Backup your files Windows 10 can ‘refresh’ your PC without affecting your documents, but we still recommend backing them up before trying it — just in case. When you wipe your PC, on the other hand, everything on it is lost, so you’ll need to backup any files and documents you want to keep. The easiest way to do this is to drag the contents of your Documents folder (and any others you want to save) onto an external storage device, such as a hard drive or USB flash drive.
How To Reinstall Windows 10 Clean Install
How to Do a Clean Install of Windows 10. By Melanie Pinola. I did my clean reinstall from Recovery in the Update and Security panel in the Action Center. It worked sweet on both a former W8.1. Now playing: Watch this: Watch how we did a clean install of Windows 10 2:59 If you have a Windows 7 or 8 computer, you have until July 29 to upgrade it to Windows 10 for free. Windows 10 Creators Update now includes a new 'Fresh Start' to reinstall and update Windows 10 on-demand without losing files if your computer is running slow, crashes or is unable to update. Through a few reasons while you may want to reinstall windows 10 you may be looking to sell your computer or you may just have a load of files on your computer that's making a mess and you just want to tidy it all up luckily with Windows 10 Microsoft has made it nice and easy to reinstall windows back to its original state and I'll be covering.
Alternatively, you can use cloud storage such as. Copying to and from cloud storage will be much slower than using an external hard drive, however, so think twice before using it for more than a few gigabytes worth of files.
How To Instal Windows 10 Clean
Kenny g wedding music. Step 2: Save your software serial numbers Any installed software will also be lost when you wipe your PC (whichever method you use), so you’ll need to reinstall it afterwards. So review what’s currently installed, and dig out the corresponding install discs and serial numbers.
Most relatively recent software can usually be downloaded, too, but you’ll still need a valid serial number or activation code to use it. Free internet tv no downloads hidden object games. If you don’t have these, a free tool like will list all software installed on your PC and any corresponding serial numbers — just click Software Licences in the left of its results windows to see yours. Step 3: Download any drivers While should detect all hardware in a relatively new PC and install its own drivers, it’s risky to rely on that happening. If nothing else, you should download the necessary driver for your computer’s Wi-Fi or network adapter, then at least you’ll be able to get online afterwards to download any other drivers you might need.
You’ll need to refer to your computer’s manual or its manufacturer’s web site to see which driver you need — and best sure to save it on a removable drive, not the hard drive you’re about to wipe. Option 1: Reset this PC Windows 10 has a built-in method for wiping your PC and restoring it to an ‘as new’ state. You can choose to preserve just your personal files or to erase everything, depending on what you need.