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#11
Hello mate, here's additional information on the complete wipe / clean install process.
After you have copied out or made back-ups of the data you need to save to external media, then boot the Windows 7 installation media to use Step One of this tutorial at the first link below to do a wipe (secure erase) to the entire Hard Disk Drive / Solid State Drive.
Either way, running the "clean all" then creating and formatting the partition(s) using diskpart will get you the best possible space to do a clean install of Windows 7 to; you can always extend the Windows partition to include the remaining unallocated space on the HDD / SSD or create additional Primary partitions or an Extended partition after the installation completes if you choose.
- Then if you do not want to create the new Windows 7 "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #2 to create, format and mark Active a single 100GB partition to do the installation to.
- If you do want to create the "System Reserved" partition use the outline in Step Two #3 to create, format and mark Active the System Reserved partition and then create and format the 100GB partition to do the installation to.
SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation
DISKPART : At PC Startup
Do a Clean Install with a Upgrade Windows 7 Version
If you don't want to wipe the entire HDD, you can do a partition-specific wipe of the Windows partition using the Partition Wizard Bootable Disk (PWBD) have a look at Option Three in the tutorial at this link below.
Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD