Windows 10: UEFI newbie: How to wipe the whole disk?

Yep, that's what I do. Boot from a live Linux distro (Ubuntu) and use Gparted. Fast and easy.

 

I have never had trouble from install media. The install media has no 'permissions' issues, so I can't understand the problem. If this were typical, you could never do true a clean install without Live Linux media.

 

There is also the Diskpart Clean option from WinPE:

• Open admin CMD
• type diskpart
• type list disk
• select disk number
• type clean & press enter
• a message appears: DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk

Now the drive can be re-initialized, partitioned, and formatted.

 

That's what I usually do from the install media. But, you should be able to do it from the advanced options.

 

I know the "old" way, but I prefer GParted because it has a great interface with sliders so you can see visually if you only want to say use 1/4 to 1/2 the disk for Windows and the rest for another partition or other OS's, plus you first give it what you want it to do in steps & can correct it before pulling the trigger.

 

@essenbe here are some screenshots of it from my VM

 

I've used it before, but I've never seen anything I couldn't do with the installer. Call me old fashioned, if you want to. It's true, I am. I've never denied it. I just fail to see the necessity.

 

One warning I do give people when "inside of windows" or online then only use Windows own tools. I would never use GParted to extend or shrink an active Windows partition. Just to nuke it.
Back to the original post though, why couldn't Kari just nuke and let Window installer repartition for the clean install?

 

Kari for the answer to this part see this msdn library: Windows and GPT FAQ

Edit: Have you turned on GPT partitiong in BIOS by setting boot to UEFI?

 

The thing was, whatever I did, I could delete / remove all other partitions but not the C:. Boot from install media, start Windows installation, the Drive tools dialog, deleted all partitions but selecting C: partition, the Delete option was disabled.

Anyway, I got this solved. I booted with a live Linux disk, used GParted removing all partitions and continued clean installing Build 10547 which of course was automatically activated when finally after customization with Sysprep I arrived to desktop.

 

Something weird happened at some point to make it so Windows couldn't handle that partition. Sorted now though. Just one of those you may never know situations.

 

FWIW the Linux Ubuntu drive tools are real decnt and intuative. I used them to recover my files from a hosed Win 7 drive where the OS wouldent load and moved them to another NTFS drive .

The Linux Ununtu drive utilities work fine on a windiows drive or ( primary partition ) or windiows host drive with Ubuntu usually better than Windows drive tools nothing wrong at all with them IMO .

 

*Thumbs*Thumbs