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05-30-2021 12:23 AM - edited 05-30-2021 12:35 AM
The link above shows what my laptop internal Storage looks like. curently
Disk 0) is my dedicated SSD for windows 10 OS
I need to format and fresh reinstall windows 10 (x64) on the partition labelled Windows above (see image through link)...This laptop came with win 8 preinstalled and has gone through a lot finally making me take a decision to reformat.
Please help me to understand the basic approach if i want to have my laptop set structurally IDENTICALLY to what is shown above (and with the same apps and softwares)
Will i get the same boot up options when I press Escape at bootup such as F10 for BIOS, F( to choose boot device and another to get to the HP UEFI Diagnostics (which is increasingly important to me the older my laptop gets)
Should I break the partitions on Drive 0 and allow Windows to recreate everything?
What about the sizes of the partitions such as UEFI on which i will have to install the HP UEFI diagnostics, will the sizes change and will i be able to install the UEFI diagnostic tool
Any other things on the UEFI partition i need to be concerned about?
Please tell me how does one get the Synaptics touchpad customization panel
What i have done until now as staging for the big event
Imaged the partitions of this disk just incase!
Checked for BIOS updates
Accumulated and saved all the drivers and aps especially the indigenous to this model of HP drive guard, cool sense, utility, accelerometer, HP support Assistant , Beats Audio, Leapmotion etc
Anything else i need to take care off ?
Thank you all
06-04-2021 12:32 PM
I think no one has responded before this because, quite frankly, you are asking the impossible. Why? Let me explain ...
Your best approach, to retain ANYTHING you currently have, is to do an in-place Upgrade from Win8x to Win10. You do that by creating Win10 install media, inserting that into your PC (do NOT boot from it), running the setup.exe file from it and then watching as it performs the update. Can take a couple of hours to complete.
If that works, it will retain your data, settings, and apps -- and the HP stuff as well -- and the drivers.
The alternative is to do a Clean Install but the problem with that is that you will lose everything in the process. You will retain no data, settings, apps, or HP utilities. While you saved off the HP drivers and could restore those, you can not restore the apps you saved -- they will be lost.
You would do the installation to the same "drive" that currently holds the OS. I presume that since it is only 120GB, that it is an SSD. After that installation, the Recovery drive is then useless and you could remove it and recover the disk space.
The partitions on the larger HDD should not be affected at all because of the Windows reinstallation, regardless of how you do it -- either in-place upgrade or clean-install. But if this were mine, I would disconnect the HDD just to be sure that nothing affected it.
Getting drivers is a very different issue and you need to open a separate thread for that.
I am a volunteer and I do not work for, nor represent, HP