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HP Recommended
17-x042ds
Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

I'm trying to repair Windows 10 Home from the HP Recovery system on a HP Laptop 17-x042ds. The owner's Microsoft **bleep** email account was hacked and resulted in her computer being unable to boot or to recover or restore from the HDD.
Using a Windows 10 USB thumb drive, from which I plan to reinstall Windows 10, when I am going through the install process, I'm asked where I want to install Windows? There are five partitions showing:


Name                                  Total size    Free space    Type
Drive 0 Partition 1                     260.0 MB      168.0 MB    System
Drive 0 Partition 2                      16.0 MB       16.0 MB    MSR (Reserved)
Drive 0 Partition 3                    1848.7 GB     1770.5 GB    Primary
Drive 0 Partition 4: Windows RE Tools   980.0 MB      419.0 MB    Recovery
Drive 0 Partition 5: RECOVERY            13.1 GB        1.6 GB    OEM (Reserved)


Is it possible to rebuild the recovery tools, etc., or do I need to do a clean install?

Which partition should I use to install Windows or should I delete all the partitions and format just one partition to install Windows on?

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions
HP Recommended

Hi:

 

It depends on what you want to do...

 

If you want to see if you can recover any files (photos, documents and whatnot), install W10 on the Primary partition and it will create a Windows.old folder.

 

After W10 has completed installing, you can explore the Windows.old folder, find the old user profile, and copy and paste the user folders to the new installation, or onto a portable hard drive.

 

If you do not need or want to try and recover files, then I recommend you delete all partitions, leaving just one partition of unallocated space and install Windows.

 

Your other option if you do not want to save any files, would be to create a bootable USB recovery drive with the HP cloud recovery tool that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with the notebook.

 

Here is an info link for how to use that utility...

 

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10) | HP® Customer Support

 

View solution in original post

3 REPLIES 3
HP Recommended

Hi:

 

It depends on what you want to do...

 

If you want to see if you can recover any files (photos, documents and whatnot), install W10 on the Primary partition and it will create a Windows.old folder.

 

After W10 has completed installing, you can explore the Windows.old folder, find the old user profile, and copy and paste the user folders to the new installation, or onto a portable hard drive.

 

If you do not need or want to try and recover files, then I recommend you delete all partitions, leaving just one partition of unallocated space and install Windows.

 

Your other option if you do not want to save any files, would be to create a bootable USB recovery drive with the HP cloud recovery tool that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with the notebook.

 

Here is an info link for how to use that utility...

 

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10) | HP® Customer Support

 

HP Recommended

Thank you Paul.

The owner said a clean install was fine. I was primarily trying to prevent her from having to purchase another license for Windows 10. I deleted all the partitions and installed the most current version of Windows 10.

 

We'll pay for her licenses because she's a single mom, with 4 children, that's also giving full time care for her mother. She works but doesn't make enough money to make ends meet. She's a really good person.

 

Thanks again for your help.

Ken

HP Recommended

You're very welcome, Ken.

 

You don't need to pay for W10.

 

The product key is in the BIOS, and W10 will automatically pick up the key and activate.

 

Paul

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