Windows 10: format my C drive and reinstall windows 10 home

I have an ASUS K52JC which came with its HD partitioned into Drives C & D and had Windows 7 Home Premium OS. The CD/DVD drive quit functioning at one point and I never found a fix for that problem.


After upgrading to Windows 10 Home, I also used software to combine the two partitions into one - drive C.


When the computer refused to boot after one of the recent Windows upgrades, I couldn't boot from the recovery disks I'd made originally because of the non-functioning CD/DVD . drive. After many tries I managed to make changes to the bios settings for boot order and make the primary a USB key. I then downloaded a boot and new Windows 10 to a USB and managed to do a fresh reinstall of Windows. Interestingly, the CD/DVD drive now works!


Since then it will boot from the HD but the HD never stops running and the boot sequence or any program or browser takes literally minutes to complete. The only message I've seen which seems to relate to the constantly running hard drive is something about the disk being "checked".


At any rate, I want to give the computer to a friend and I don't care about preserving any programs or files I downloaded and used. I would like to reformat the HD with only one partition - Drive C and reinstall Windows 10 so that the friend will have a functioning computer without all the changes I made which are likely causing its problems.


If anyone here can tell me how to go about formatting the drive to be certain that all previous partitioning and files are removed so the clean drive is ready for the new Windows install, I would be eternally grateful!

:)

 

How to format on Windows 7

just format from the installer on the windows 7 DVD. the options there when you choose which drive to install on.


i suggest partiotining the drive, i run with a 60GB C: drive, but then move my user folder to the D: partition - so that when i format/reinstall, my desktop/my docs, etc, dont get lost.

 

How to format on Windows 7

150GB for OS should be fine?

 

How to format hard drive and still keep windows 10?

Though just formatting C: drive isn't enough. Old Windows created one extra hidden partition and Windows 10 creates another one, both together taking almost 1GB of space.