How to Reinstall W10

[Ocoee1]

Pav 950. Have a post below about trying to repair MBR. Gave up on that and simply want to reinstall W10.

There are five partitions; where do I put the install? Do I delete the windows  partition?

Thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

If you don't need to recover any files from the Windows partition, you can delete it.

Actually, if it were my PC, I would delete all of the partitions and have 100% of the drive space available to me.

If you want to recover files from the Wndows partition let Windows install over the current Windows partition, and it will create a Windows.old folder.

After W10 has completed installing you can explore the Windows.old folder, find your old user profile and copy any files and folders you want to the new installation.

Then you can delete the Windows.old folder using the disk cleanup utility>cleanup system files button.

[Ocoee1]

It will not allow me to delete the windows partition. It will allow me to delete all the others (have not done that yet.) If I try to install on the windows partition, first it says "Partitions are not in the recommended order  and refers to Microsoft GPT. If I proceed with install it begins but fails. Gets to the last step and says "windows could not prepare the  computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install, restart install" have tried to install twice. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is very odd.

Maybe you should try cleaning the disk if it won't let you even install W10 over the existing Windows partition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=z4Z38pD1Gt0&feature=emb_logo

[Ocoee1]

googled the error and internet says install is confused about what drive to use. Pav comes with m.2 and ssd. "They" say to unplug second drive and install. I would have thought that the m.2 would be the system drive but it appears the ssd is the os drive. Still playing with it.

[Ocoee1]

It appears they set this up as a raid system. I don't use raid and can't seem to find the setting in the bios, but here's what I know. Again this is an ssd and a m.2

I disconnected one drive expecting to see it start on one drive or the other. I use lots of extra drives and that's what should happen. 

Disconnect one, no drive, no os found. Switch drives. No drive, no os. Plug in one drive and run install, no drive found. Same with other drive. Finally bite the bullet and start to delete partitions even though it says it can't delete the Windows partition. After I delete the backup partitions it allows me to delete all partitions. Then I was able to install os. 

It still only shows one drive.  I even went into disk management and it shows one drive. Don't fully understand, but it's running.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Glad you were able to get W10 up and running again.