factory restore question(s)

[harleynut97]

Our good friend fell for a scam ( one of the those ...your PC is infected, let us fix it for you scams.

Bottom line she fell for it hook line and sinker.... she paid them 199.00, they gained remote access to her computer. Has all her personal address, phone # ect. She's already contacted the credit card company to get a new card.

So tomorrow I am going over there and am going to do a complete factory restore on her laptop. All she has is a bunch of JPG photos and some word documents. I'll back those up before doing the factory restore.

But here are my questions...

1) She had windows 7 and recently upgraded to windows 10. I know the factory restore is going to take her back to windows 7. If she wants to once again upgrade to windows 10...do I need to first do a windows update for windows 7 after the factory restore, before doing the upgrade steps for win 10?

2) She also had a MS office suite program.... should I install the MS suite after the factory restore, or wait until doing the upgrade to windows 10?

 

[oscer1]

hi check this page out you probably can just do a fresh installation of windows 10. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10/

 

[AddRAM]

Yep just create a Windows 10 install dvd or usb stick, and just clean install windows 10.

Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

 

[ignatzatsonic]

But here are my questions...

1) She had windows 7 and recently upgraded to windows 10. I know the factory restore is going to take her back to windows 7. If she wants to once again upgrade to windows 10...do I need to first do a windows update for windows 7 after the factory restore, before doing the upgrade steps for win 10?

2) She also had a MS office suite program.... should I install the MS suite after the factory restore, or wait until doing the upgrade to windows 10?

1: I seriously doubt it. I think all you need is an activated install of Windows 7 SP1.

2: Not sure. I'd probably put Office on 7 on the theory that maybe it wouldn't like seeing 10 on there for some oddball licensing reason. I doubt if it would matter if she had a standard retail Office license, but maybe she doesn't and maybe her Office license is tied to 7 and wants to see her original configuration when you try to install it. Of course, if you do a clean install of 10, you'd have to put Office on 10 again.

 

[AddRAM]

How to Upgrade from Windows 7 or 8 to Windows 10 (Right Now)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-upgrade

 

[harleynut97]

Hey .... just wanted to say thanks for your recommendations. She decided that she wanted to stick with windows 8.1, so I just ended up doing a factory reinstall. Which went smooth. I only had to reinstall/ reactivate her MS office suite and transfer her data back over. One thing however really surprised me with this factory reset.

- After doing the factory reset, her printer (wireless) was all still setup correctly, and when I opened Internet Explorer there were still bookmarks showing. I would have thought everything would have been wiped out when doing the restore. I remember when going into the restore process they asked if I wanted to keep settings or I could choose set up like new user.