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Question

Reformatting laptop hdd

Feb 24, 2016 4:28PM PST

My laptop was recently encrypted as a "prank" but they did It wrong, leaving my laptop unbootable. After searching around, remformating the drive seems to be the easiest, quickest way to do things. Which brings me to my quesion(s)

1-what piece of equipment would I need to get in order to reformat the drive on a different computer

2- how would I go about reformatting it

3- Would I need to buy another copy of win 10 to install on the drive once its been wiped.

Sorry if these questions are so simple they make you roll your eyes, and sorry if I put this question on the wrong forum.

Discussion is locked

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Answer
There's some good news here.
Feb 24, 2016 5:28PM PST

1. You don't need to format the drive. Just erase it. I can use any number of bootable systems like DISKPART, DBAN or others. Just erase the drive or delete the partitions to give W10 a clean drive to install to.

2. You need a Windows 10 recovery USB stick with the full Windows 10 on it. Here's a link on how I made mine. YOU MUST DO THIS BEFORE you lose a machine. It's just like backups today. Not optional when we run Windows or any PC that we install an OS.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/create-a-recovery-drive

I did this for my brothers Inspiron that had crashed and used my Inspiron to create the USB. Lucky me, it was close enough machine wise.

3. Not how W10 licensing works. I'll stop here as it's too detailed to write it again. But no.

No eye rolls. Have any egg rolls?

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Won't even go to bios
Feb 24, 2016 7:01PM PST

I can't boot from my usb, it won't even let me go to the bios menu. It is just stuck on an infinite loop of "attempting repairs"

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Getting to the BIOS is harder today.
Feb 25, 2016 8:19AM PST

Depending on the model, the keys you press vary. I find I have to hold down that key then power on to get to the menu or bios.