I have a laptop that's prompting me for a username and password at boot, but unfortunately, those credentials are long gone. I don't care about any data on the hard drive; I just want to wipe it clean and install Windows 10 or 11 so I can use it at home. Can someone guide me on how to do this efficiently without spending too much time on it? Thanks!
6 Answers
Just a heads up, if you're planning to boot from removable media, be cautious – it might be locked in the BIOS settings. You may need to enter those settings to enable USB booting.
As others have mentioned, if you're not planning on keeping any data, this process is relatively simple. During the Windows installation, when you get to the partition screen, just delete all existing partitions, select the unallocated space, and hit next. Windows will handle the rest. The encryption won’t matter unless you want to recover anything.
I'm not familiar with Becrypt, but usually, if you're dealing with any kind of encryption software and you can't access it, the best approach is to wipe the drive using install media and start fresh. That's worked for me in the past.
You'll want to use the Windows 10/11 Media Creation Tool. Just burn it to a USB drive and boot from that. It should lead you through the installation process smoothly.
You can boot from your Windows installation media, delete the encrypted partition, and then reinstall Windows typically. It's pretty straightforward. Just make sure you have the right boot settings to start from the USB or DVD.
One quick way to handle this is to delete the existing data partition, recreate it, and then install Windows on that. Hiren's Boot CD or Medicat can really help out here. If you're comfortable with the command line, using Diskpart during the Windows installation process is also pretty fast and effective. You can easily find step-by-step instructions online too.
Thanks for the tips! I’ll give this a try.