Easiest way to clean Install Windows 10 / Windows 10

Up until now, if you wanted to start fresh with your Windows 10 PC, you had one of two options: reset your PC or download the Windows 10 ISO and reinstall the operating system manually. In a previous post, I wrote about how you can restore Windows to factory settings, but this really just resets your Windows 10 PC.

Resetting a Windows 10 PC is not the same as performing a clean install. If you have an OEM machine, a clean install will usually still include all the additional software installed by default by the OEM. This is not an ideal scenario.

You can download the Windows 10 ISO easily, but performing the manual installation is still a technical task that requires you to change the boot order on your computer, format the drive properly, etc now there is an option to do a real clean install without worrying about the technical details.

In this article, I will show you how to do this process which, in my tests, only took about 30 to 60 minutes depending on the speed of your computer.

Before performing a clean install

Before you do a clean install, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, you’ll have the option to keep your personal files, in case you don’t want to delete them. It’s really about the only option you have when it comes to doing a clean install.

Second, when doing a clean install with this new tool, you won’t be able to change the size of the partitions on the hard drive. If you need to repartition the drive, you’ll need to use the old method to do a manual install.

During the process, Windows won’t touch any other partitions on the hard drive, so if you have data on those partitions, you won’t lose any data even if you choose the option to erase everything. rank.

Third, you need to make sure you have Windows 10 Anniversary Update installed. If it doesn’t install itself via Windows Update, you can download the Anniversary Update here manually.

Clean install Windows 10

As I said before, with this new tool the process is very simple and does not take much time. To get started, click Startafterward Settingafterward Update & Security And after that Rehibilitate.

At the bottom you will see a link called Learn how to start fresh with a clean install of Windows below the More recovery options title. Click that link and you will be taken to a Fresh start page on the Microsoft website. Scroll to the bottom and click Download the tool now knot.

This will download Download automatic directory. Go ahead and double click on RefreshWindowsTool file.

A dialog window will appear explaining what the tool will do and giving you the option to delete everything or keep the personal files.

Click Start button and the first step of the clean install begins. The first step is for the tool to download the latest version of Windows 10. This will be about 3 GB in size, so it may take a while if you have a slower Internet connection. Unfortunately, there is no way to select a local image file at this time.

Next, the tool will create the Windows media needed to perform a clean install.

Finally, it will also download any latest updates and add them to the media.

When done, Windows will restart and you should see Install Windows message on the screen.

This phase takes the longest and once completed you will see the start of the initial setup screen.

I won’t go into detail here as it’s largely self-explanatory, but I’ll cover the next screen because it’s so important to privacy. I wrote a guide on how to make Windows 10 more secure by changing a lot of privacy settings, but it’s much easier to do at this stage than when Windows is installed.

You will be tempted to click Use quick settings, but not. Click Custom and disable everything on the next three screens (about 10 to 12 toggles)! If you end up needing one of those features, it can easily be turned on at a later time.

That’s about it. You should now be able to sign in to your freshly installed copy of Windows 10! This is also a great way to do it because you don’t have to worry about reactivating Windows or anything like that. Overall, this is the easiest and fastest option to do a really clean install of Windows 10!