Windows 10: Wipe Windows without recovery

I just bought a refurbished laptop, realized after setting it up that I hate it, and I am now eager to return it - I want to wipe all of my info from it before sending it back. There is nothing on this laptop that I want to save since all my important files are saved to dropbox. When I try to reset in settings, I get an error message that it can't be reset because it cannot find a recovery environment. I did the whole cmd -- reagentc/enable -- according to some youtube video and that didn't take... Please, I really don't have the brain or the time for dealing with corrupt files or making parti

:)

 

Windows 10 recovery doesnt wipe my hard-disk

Hi, to clean install Windows you need to create a bootable flash drive or other medium from which to boot your PC. That's covered at Step 1 of the tutorial shown below (Clean Install..)

Windows 10 Tutorial Index
- searchable list of tutorials - search that page for
clean install
and you will see this as 2nd link found
Clean Install Windows 10

At step 13/14 you have the option presented to you where you can delete existing partitions.

Note: some suggest- as you have a desktop- physically disconnecting other drives just to ensure Windows is installed exclusively on the one drive.

 

How does Windows boot to advanced recovery option e.g. command prompt?

- that gives me a 454 'Unexpected error' This tells me that the BCD is partially corrupted.

The commands: shutdown.exe /r /o /f /t 00
or: %SystemRoot%\System32\Cmd.exe /c reagentc /boottore&shutdown /r /f /t 00
should boot into Recovery if everything is configured correctly.
FYI, If Windows is configured correctly:

1. If Reagentc is disabled, you still can get into Recovery but with limited options.
2. If Reagentc is enabled, you'll get all options.
3. If you boot Windows using Recovery USB stick, You'll get into Recovery with couple of options missing.

Here's my suggestion if you want to try:
OPTION 1: Will save the trouble of re-install Windows.

1. Download the image of my first 3 partitions (450MB Recovery, 100 MB EFI partition, and 16MB unformatted primary)
   EFI_Boot-00-00.7z - Google Drive
2. Run Macrium and restore the image from step 1, overwriting your existing 1st three partitions, leaving C alone.
3. Delete the 490MB Recovery partition.
4. From Macrium, run fix boot problems.
5. Reboot. Open Admin command prompt then run Reagentc /info to make sure that it is enabled. If not, enable it.
   if failed to enable, reboot and try again.

OPTION 2: Assuming you've already had Windows backup with Macrium.

1. Wipe out the first 5 parttiions. (450MB, 100MB, 16MB, C Drive, 480MB)
2. Fresh install Windows 10
3. Restore C drive from backup image, run fix boot problems
4. repeat step 5 from OPTION 1 above.

 

Data Recovery for Mac (OSX Capitan) ?

Anybody knows of a good data recovery software for mac? Preferably free?

I use Active@ Data Recovery for Windows, but honestly no idea what to use for Mac OSX.

Any suggestions?