Windows 10: Help! Reinstall windows without wiping the drive.

Hi there, not used old Acer laptop in 5 years, I got to login on laptop which runs on Microsoft, but asking for password I used 5 years ago! Call Acer, they say call Microsoft and ask “reinstall windows but not to wipe drive”. I’ve called Microsoft and I’ve been passed around a few departments and I’m not sure they know what to do. Please help as I can get through to the right Microsoft department on the phone? Or someone on here who can guid me on what to do? I’m out of work atm, my cv is all on there, I’ve come acts job opportunity too and I really need the cv and to update it. I can’t r

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Cannot boot or reinstall windows, or wipe drive

Hi anelson0528,

I'm Paul, a Microsoft Community Member. I hope I can help you with your concern.

Please try to use Diskpart to wipe the Disk drive. Refer to the steps below.

1. During the Windows 10 setup, press Shift + F10 keyboard shortcut to open Command Prompt.

2. When Command Prompt opens, enter diskpart and press Enter.

3. Now enter list disk and press Enter.

A list of all available hard drives will appear. You need to select the disk that you want to wipe.

4. Enter select disk 0 and press Enter.

5. Enter clean and press Enter.

6. Optional: Use convert gtp or convert mbr command to convert your drive to the desired type.

7. Enter exit and press Enter.

Close Command Prompt and try to install Windows 10 again.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and keep me posted.

 

How to wipe a hard drive

modder I already used kill-disk. The deletion is done, I need to reinstall everything.

 

Help, cant create windows image

Hello there, @fullinfusion!

It seems like some sort of an OS confusion has happened with your secondary WD Black and I'm sorry to hear about that. *Frown
Maybe re-formatting it would help indeed as the community already mentioned. I'd suggest to take a look at this step-by-step how to partition and format an HDD: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=PYCoid
Keep in mind that this will wipe clean the drive, so you should backup all important data from the drive somewhere else.
I noticed from the screenshots that your HDD appears as Disk 0, this means that it's plugged in the primary SATA port where the SSD (as an OS drive) should be. Actually it is possible that because of this Windows cannot create the image there. Swap the ports of the SSD and the HDD, this might help as well.

Keep me posted. Hope this helped! *Smile
SuperSoph_WD