Option : Reset Unbootable Windows 10 And Delete Everything With Advanced Recovery
If your Windows 10 computer is not working or unbootable, you can use a bootable USB to factory reset Windows 10 from boot menu.
Note
- Insert the bootable USB/CD disk into computer, press any key to boot from removable disk
- Now click Repair your computer link in the left corner of the screen
- Youll see three options in the new Window, choose Troubleshoot and then click Reset this PC
- In the Reset this PC screen, select Remove everything to delete everything and reinstall Windows 10.
- Choose Fully clean the drive option and then click Reset this PC to finish the process
Weve shown you how to completely factory reset windows 10 clearly. For any further questions or inquiries, feel free to contact us.
How To Permanently Delete Files Using Secure Empty Trash On Mac
Emptying your computer’s trash gets rid of the files you no longer want anymore. But bear in mind that the files still exist as explained in the first part of this article âthey remain on your hard drive. Their data will be overwritten whenever your Mac needs space for newer data you create. This makes it easy for data to be recovered by data recovery software.
To permanently delete files on Mac, you could use the Secure Empty Trash. This tool overwrites the deleted files with “meaningless data” so the file no longer exists.
Step 1: Open the Dock, click and hold down the Trashcan icon.
Step 2: Hold down the command key on your keyboard and click on Trash. You’ll notice that “Empty Trash” will be changed to “Secure Empty Trash” âSelect it.
From any open Finder window, you can click on the Finder menu > select Secure Empty Trash to perform the same operation. Also, you can make Secure Empty Trash the default behavior your OS performs when you empty trash by opening Finder > Click on the Finder menu and select Preferences. Next, Check Empty Trash Securely.
Laptops Desktops And Internal Hard Drives
On a laptop or desktop, your internal hard drives only need to be wiped if theyre mechanical hard drives or hybrid hard drives. When you delete a file on a solid-state drive, the file is automatically wiped from the drive due to TRIMthis helps keep your SSD speedy.
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The below tricks are only necessary if youre using a mechanical or hybrid hard drive. Dont do this for solid-state drives its both a waste of time and will cause unnecessary wear to the SSD.
On Windows 10 or 11, you can simply choose to Reset your PC and tell Windows to clean the drive during the process. This wipes the drive, will ensure none of your files can be recovered later.
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If youre using Windows 7, Linux, or another operating system, you can boot your computer from a tool like DBAN. This tool will boot up and erase your computers hard drives, overwriting them with random data. Youll have to reinstall Windows or Linux afterward before anyone can use the computer again, of course.
On a Mac with a mechanical hard drive, you can boot into Recovery Mode and use the Disk Utility application to erase the hard drive before reinstalling macOS.
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Deletes And Shreds Files Permanently
Another thing that I love about FileZero is that it is really great when it comes to shredding and deleting files permanently. Sometimes, when you delete the files using the default feature in the Windows, it does not always get deleted, and sometimes, the files turn into fragments and can be recovered later n. The good news is that with FileZero, you can easily delete the files, and shred them permanently. The files will not be in fragments either, so that is certainly a good thing for people who are concerned.
Reset This Pc In Windows 10
To Reset your Windows 10 PC:
Read on for details with screenshots!
From the WinX Menu open Windows 10 Settings and select Update and security as shown below.
Next click on the Recovery link, which you will see in the left pane. Now under Reset this PC, click on Get started button which you will see on the right side.
You will see the following window open up. If you do not want to lose your files and data, select the Keep my files option. When you select this option, Windows will remove your apps and settings but keep your personal files and data intact.
If you want to remove everything and start afresh, select the Remove everything option. If you select the Remove everything option, Windows will ask you if you want to remove all files from all drives or only the drive where Windows is installed. You will also be asked if you want to clean the drives too.
Once you make your selection, you will see the following screen, where Windows will tell you that it is getting things ready.
Once Windows is ready, it will show you a list of your apps that will be removed. It will also save a list of removed apps to your desktop which you can access after the reset operation is over.
You have the option to Cancel the reset operation if you wish to. If you wish to proceed, click Next.
Note: You can also use the Cloud Reset option.
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Complete Wipe/reinstallation Of Windows 10 Pro 20h2
We have been asked to repurpose a laptop computer that has Windows 10 Pro 20H2 as the operating system. The new user of the computer has asked for a complete wipe of the laptop, followed by a fresh reinstallation of Windows 10 . We will then transfer over some data files that have been backed up to an external USB drive. We will also need to reinstall certain programs that were on the laptop previously .
The initial part of the process is completely blanking out the contents on the disk drive that were used by the previous staff member. Was this type of wipe/reinstall process easily available in a prior version of Windows 10 but not in the current version? If so, is there still a relatively easy way to accomplish what we are trying to do ?
Thanks very much for any assistance you can offer.
Options When Resetting Windows 10
Next, you’ll see an Additional settings menu that has a Current settings section, containing a summary of what you’ve chosen to do so far. There’s also a Change settings link you can click for more options.
If you chose Keep my files earlier, the only option under Change settings is a redundant toggle for cloud or local reinstall. There are more choices when you pick Remove everything.
Enabling Clean data? will obliterate everything on the drive to reduce the chance of someone recovering it later. Though this process takes some time, you should use it if you’re getting rid of your computer. It’s not necessary if you’re keeping your machine.
Turn on Delete files from all drives? to erase everything on all drives you have connected to your computer. This includes external hard drives and recovery drives. Because you probably have backups and other important files on those drives, you shouldn’t use this unless you want to permanently erase everything associated with your computer.
If you purchased your PC off-the-shelf, you’ll also see a Restore preinstalled apps? slider here. Disable this, and Windows won’t include manufacturer bloatware and other preinstalled apps when it reinstalls. This option won’t appear if you initially installed Windows yourself.
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S To Repair Corrupt Word File With Bitraser File Eraser
Data can be erased on Mac using BitRaser File Eraser followed by a series of step i.e.
Step 1: Download Stellar BitRaser for the file on Windows and connect the Mac hard drive with the PC.
Step 2: Launch Stellar BitRaser and select your Mac drive
Step 3: Click Erase Now button to erase the Mac hard drive on Windows.
Erasing data using BitRaser eliminates any possibility to recover erased data by using any data recovery software or services which might also include forensic tools. Therefore, any erased file by BitRaser can not be ever recovered. Make sure to check your files before you erase them. Donât be in much hurry to bear any great loss.
How To Use Sdelete
To use the SDelete utility, open an administrative-level command prompt by right-clicking the Start button.
At the prompt, type in your command for SDelete . The command-line entry for three passes in quiet mode with recursed subdirectories would look like:
sdelete -p 3 -r -q C:\SensitiveData
Note: The SDelete utility does not delete files itself–it only overwrites the memory sectors of files located on the storage device that have previously been deleted. For example, if you were to enter this SDelete command using the clean free space parameter into your prompt, the utility would overwrite all of the previously deleted files on the D: drive without impacting any existing active files stored on that drive.
sdelete -c D:
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How To Delete Files From Laptop Before Selling
” I purchased a new laptop and want to sell the old one, which is still in good condition. I have a lot of documents on it and want to erase all data from it before selling it. What is the secure method to clean up a laptop to sell? ” Joe asked me about that two days.
After buying a new laptop or computer, people may often decide to sell or giveaway their old laptop to less fortunate since the old laptop will not be used as often. Yet, selling or donating your laptop can be very scary since all the important data and documents are stored on your old laptop that you don’t want to be leaked or misused by another other person.
In order to maintain the privacy and security of the data and files on your laptop, you must delete all the information from the old laptop without leaving any trace behind. Surely, you can delete all files and folders by using the format option or by using the basic delete feature but you must know that it is the most unsafety way to erase data from your computer since these files can be easily recovered using any professional data recovery program.
A basic files deletion only deletes the links from the files that makes the information disappeared from the computer but in reality the file is not really deleted from the computer. Any hacker can find these missing links using data recovery software and retrieve all personal information and misuse them before you can even know.
How To Encrypt Your Ssd
The easiest way to encrypt your PC is to use the built-in encryption option in Windows, but not all SSDs support this feature. To find out, do this:
1. Click the Start button and then click “Settings.”
2. Click “System” and then click “About.”
- If you see an option for “Device Encryption,” click it and follow the instructions to encrypt your hard drive.
- If Device Encryption isn’t an option for your PC, you might be able to turn on BitLocker, depending on which version of Windows 10 you have. Click “BitLocker settings” and follow the directions to enable it. If the link takes you to the Microsoft Store to purchase Windows 10 Pro, BitLocker won’t be an option without paying for the upgrade.
- One other option: If you can’t use either of Windows’ built-in encryption options, you can install a third-party encryption tool. There are several free ones to choose from, including TrueCrypt and VeraCrypt.
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A Simple Hard Drive Wipe Alternative
Beginning in Windows Vista, the format process changed and a single write-zero pass is applied to each standard format. In other words, a very basic hard drive wipe is performed during a format.
If a single write-zero pass is good enough for you, consider your drive wiped after a regular format in Windows 10, 8, 7, or Vista. If you want something even more secure, follow the hard drive wipe instructions above.
This is a wipe of just the partition you’re formatting. If you have more than one partition on a physical hard drive, you’ll need to format those additional drives as well if you want to consider the entire physical disk as “wiped.”
Ways To Factory Reset Your Windows Computer
Learn how to factory reset Windows 10 using several methods, including from boot and manually reinstalling.
Factory resets are the nuclear solution for many Windows issues. If your computer is far slower than it once was, you have a malware infection that you can’t remove, or plan to sell your machine, a factory reset is the most convenient option.
Depending on your setup and installed version of Windows, you have a few different ways to factory reset a Windows laptop or desktop. We’ll show you how to reset a Windows 10, 8, or 7 computer as easily as possible.
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Wipe A Computer Hard Drive Clean With These Steps
Tim Fisher has more than 30 years’ of professional technology experience. He’s been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the VP and General Manager of Lifewire.
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To wipe a hard drive means to completely erase the drive of all its information. Deleting everything does not wipe a hard drive and formatting does not usually either. You’ll need to take an extra step so the data can’t be easily reconstructed later.
When you format a hard drive or delete a partition, you’re usually only deleting the file system, making the data invisible, or no longer actively indexed, but not gone. A file recovery program or special hardware often recovers the information.
If you want to make sure that your private information is gone forever, you’ll need to wipe the hard drive using special software.
Wiping a hard drive is operating system independent if you use one of the bootable tools from our list mentioned in Step 2 below, which means that it doesn’t matter what OS is running on the drive.
See the tip at the bottom of the page for information on a “simple” wipe using the format command in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista.
What Kind Of Data Cannot Be Recovered
Erased data. Once the wipe operation is carried out, the files will not be recovered by any data recovery software. If the number of times to wipe the hard disk is set to 10, the data will never be recovered by any data recovery solution.
Overwritten data. After data loss, you continue to use the hard drive or storage device and write new data over the old one. Strictly speaking, it is impossible to recover overwritten files.
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How To Securely Wipe Your Computer Phone Or Tablet
Your computer, phone, or tablet holds all kinds of personal information about you, and before you sell, return, recycle, or donate it, you should make sure to delete all of that information correctly. On most devices, wiping your data securely is pretty straightforward, and doing so can prevent your data from being recovered by someone you would rather not have it. How you do this depends on which operating system you have and what type of storage drive your device has.
Before you wipe a computer, make sure that you have a backup of any files you need and deactivate any software that requires doing so. For Macs, Apple recommends logging out of any iCloud services, including iTunes and iMessages.
Next, figure out which type of storage your computer has. On Windows, this information is harder to find than it should be, but the easiest way is to open the Defragment and Optimize Drives tool . On a Mac, click the Apple logo and then About this Mac, and select the Storage tab. The entry typically says solid state or flash storage for a solid-state drive , whereas for a mechanical hard drive it says hard disk drive.
The following directions for wiping a computer will work with any system running Windows 10, as well as most Macs. If you have an older copy of Windows or if you like to get into the weeds with different file-deletion methods, a third-party tool like Dban is your best option.
How To Remotely Wipe Laptop Data If Stolen Delete All Data
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