Factory reset(win7) and reinstall Win10

[PA-WOODCHUCK]

I have a HP notebook that I want to do factory reset which had Win 7. Once reset how do I reinstall Win10 when the free upgrade was offered? Provide links if needed?

thanks

 

[Tim Locke]

From your wording... does the Laptop have W10 installed now. It sounds as if it has a broken version that needs to be reloaded.

If it has ever had a W10 version loaded and activated you can just download W10 and install it.

 

[Bighorn]

If it has ever had a W10 version loaded and activated you can just download W10 and install it.

That's also the way I've gone with both Win7 and Win8/8.1, much quicker than doing the Factory Reset then reinstall. And if Win10 is actually working can do the Reset in Updates and Security.

 

[PA-WOODCHUCK]

From your wording... does the Laptop have W10 installed now. It sounds as if it has a broken version that needs to be reloaded.

If it has ever had a W10 version loaded and activated you can just download W10 and install it.

Yes fully activated Win10, just want to make sure all personal data is removed before selling. I presume current reset will restore OEM, I maybe wrong and it has Win8 when purchased, if so how can I check what was the original version of Win?

 

[Tim Locke]

You can tell a full reinstall to delete all files except Windows itself. I don't know what cruft that might leave behind...never had to do it.

 

[BigFeet]

There is an option to "clean" the hard drive when you do a system reset in case you are selling or giving the PC away. I'm sure someone savvy enough could still get info off it. How much I don't know. I usually either pull the hard drive and/or replace it with a new one before reselling any of mine. Here's a step by step in doing a system reset.
https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/reset-windows-10-pc

 

[Trouble]

I've always been pretty comfortable using Shift + F10 during a clean install to open a Command Prompt at the beginning to use DiskPart to "Clean" the target drive and then perform the clean install to the empty drive's unallocated space.
I guess if I was very serious and a bit paranoid I'd use something like DBAN to completely overwrite it.

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