My windows 10 has been running a little sluggish lately and I was wondering what the quickest way is to do a clean install. Do I have to remove the VM and start from scratch or is there a quicker way to do a new clean install.

 

For my initial setup I used this video created by spaceinvader but I can't seem to find any tutorial to do just a clean re-install of the Windows 10 OS.

 

Thank you

52 minutes ago, arrush said:

For my initial setup I used this video created by spaceinvader but I can't seem to find any tutorial to do just a clean re-install of the Windows 10 OS.

Assuming you don't want to nuke your VM in unRAID webui, and you're looking to just re-install Windows 10 inside the guest, then: 

• Click on WIndows/Start menu button
• Click on "Settings" or the gear icon
• In the "Windows Settings" window, where it has the box you can type/search, type, "reset this PC" and choose that option when it comes up.
• Under "Recovery" click on the "Get started" button, and this will start a Windows re-install.

This process should keep your user files and drivers, but removes programs and re-installs Windows - now is this quicker than just nuking the VM and starting over? IDK probably be roughly the same.

Do either of these approaches need you to reactivate Windows?

2 hours ago, John_M said:

Do either of these approaches need you to reactivate Windows?

Deleting a VM, I don't know. However doing a reset on Windows should keep activation.

EDIT: A third method (which should keep activation but delete all files):

   This method assumes you still have the Windows ISO as part of the VM.

• Click on Windows button
• HOLD left-shift on keyboard, and then click on the power icon and click "Restart."
• Windows 10 should reboot into a boot menu
• select "use a device"
• select "UEFI QEMU DVD-ROM"  

System should reboot and prompt for a key-press to start loading off the "DVD."  Installation would be the same as installing a new VM, however just need to clear the drive while in the installer environment.  

 

Edited September 4, 20187 yr by Jcloud

Thanks.