Windows 10 PC Reset Problem

Question

Greetings All,

I purchased a new PC recently and decided to recycle my old one. To do this I had to reset my old PC making sure the all data was 'cleaned' from it, as instructed via Microsoft documentation. I set up the PC reset parameters as the documentation stated (i.e. 'Remove Everything', 'Cloud download', 'Clean data' and 'Download Windows') and started the reset.

This took a long time; first downloading what I thought was a new version of Windows 10 (it didn't actually state what it was downloading), then it went into 'Boot' mode but was displaying a '% Reset' value. Nothing much else happened until it got to 26% Reset. At this point it seemed to wait a long time but, as the disk activity light was still illuminated, I left it alone and got on with stuff on my new PC. After a long time (about at least an hour possibly more) I checked my old PC again and found the it was now displaying an 'Undoing changes' message (it was still in the same 'Boot' mode). I thought I'd better leave it alone again, as there wasn't really anything I could do to it anyway. After yet more time had passed I found the my old PC was now displaying the 'Boot' screen as though it was actually trying to reboot. However, the little twirling circle of dots (that indicate the 'Boot' operation is in progress) was frozen and the disk activity light was off.

At this point I shut the old PC down (via the off switch) and left it for the night. Next day, when I switched the old PC on it rebooted successfully. However, when I tried logging in it displayed my name and requested I enter my password. When I did this it stated that the 'Profile could not be loaded'. In other words I can no longer log into my old PC. So I can't check whether all of my data/apps have been removed.

I now have a number of questions which I would be very grateful is anyone can answer. They as follows:

• What happened to the PC Reset, did it work or not?
• Why the 'Undoing changes' message?
• Why can't I log into the PC?
• Has my data/apps been removed and, if it has, how am I supposed to find out?

I look forward to any info you can give.

Many thanks

Answer 1

It sounds like what you did was just a "reset" To remove everything deleting partitions is one way. If there is sensitive info you're concerned about then there are tools on the internet you can search for that will write zeros to the disk. Since you're recycling it, the more tried and true method is to remove the disk and take a hammer to it.

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Answer 2

Not sure what you wanted to end up with (windows installed?) if so you can download install media here, boot from it and delete partition(s), create new one to continue and complete the install.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

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