Jul 31, 2014  ThinkPad Tablet 2 clean install Hello, I have ThinkPad Tablet 2 with Windows 8 Pro in it. I upgraded to 8.1 but now i want to do a clean install of Windows 8.1, that means i have to make a bootable USB with.iso in it. Is there any way to have original Windows 8.1 from clean install or the only way is to upgrade? The steps to recover a Windows 7 system using the ThinkVantage software are similar to those of Windows Vista: Insert your first Rescue & Recovery Startup/Boot Disc CD If you don’t have the recovery CD or DVD, go to Download alternative recovery disk for Lenovo or follow the next set of instructions from below.

On my Lenovo H50-55 Desktop Computer, I see the following partitions in Disk Management:

(Click on the picture to see the image enlarged)

I wish to reinstall a fresh copy of Windows 10 Home x64, which is what the PC shipped with but I am slightly confused as to which partitions I need to wipe, keep or delete as I cannot identify the identity and uses of all the partitions.

I do not wish to use Lenovo OneKey recovery as this does not leave a fresh Windows installation but one with lots of Lenovo pre-installed software. I would however like to keep this for potential future use, provided this does not interfere with the installation by installing software onto the fresh installation.

I believe the partitions labelled 'Recovery Partition' are related to OneKey Recovery but it is not clear to me what the 'EFI System Partition' or 'OEM Partition' are. The 'Windows' partition is clearly the C drive.

I have created install media but do not have a product key. Apparently, the PC should automatically activate when reinstalling provided the edition of Windows 10 is kept the same.

I cannot see the System Reserved partition in Disk Management but it is my understanding that although this partition is not necessary, Windows installations usually have one.

My questions are:

• Does the PC have a Windows System Reserved partition?
• How do I achieve a fresh, automatically-activated installation of Windows 10?

This question seems to be similar to my own one, as is this one but the partition layout is a little different and the questions do not seem to deal with reinstalling Windows.

When I open Lenovo Rescue System, which seems to be another name for OneKey Recovery in order to try and create recovery media, I am presented with the following. I'm not quite sure what to do from here.

Thinkpad Reinstall Windows 7

1 Answer

I agree that Lenovo ships a lot of software that is unnecessary, and that a fresh install of Windows is best.

As always, Step ONE is to make sure you have good backups.

Does you Lenovo computer have an option to make restore media? All the Lenovo computers that I have seen let you make recovery media on either DVD's or CD's. The current program that Lenovo uses to create restore media is called OneKey; use the backup option to create restore media.

There are other programs that do partition image backups such as CloneZilla, Macrium, DriveImageXML, Paragon, and Easeus, spring to mind, but there are others.

Once you have a good backup, or three, then you are ready to proceed to the next step. (The point of backups is to get you back to where you started from, without loosing any data.

This step is destructive, so be sure you have good backups [1].

At the very least you need to remove the Windows System Partition, but there are other partitions, for example the EFI, Recovery, System Reserved partions. If you have done a full image backup, then you should be completely safe to delete all of these partitions. I generally want a completely fresh install of Windows, so I delete them all. I do the partitioning during the Windows install process, but you can also use other tools.

In my experience, Windows 7, 8, and 10 has always created a new EFI partition.

Thinkpad Install Windows 10

Once you have removed the old partitions, you can now do a clean install of Windows 10.

Windows 10 should reactivate just fine as you already have activated it on that computer.

Lenovo Reinstall Windows 10

• [1]: When doing major operations like Operating System reloads, I generally just purchase a replacement hard drive. That way I have the old one as my backup :).

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged windows-10partitioninglenovo-desktop-computer or ask your own question.

Lenovo Thinkpad Reinstall Windows

Lenovo Reinstall Windows 8