Solved Complicated fresh reinstall of 8.1, Help!

AMB1101

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I have a Dell Inspiron 15 that I just bought used, the machine is only a year old in great shape the guy never used it. It came preloaded with 8, the previous owner swapped out the old HD with better higher RPM HD. He then loaded 8.1 and updated the Drivers. However he also he named the machine his name. I want to use this machine for business and would like to reformat the drive and reload win 8.1 on it. I've looked up the product key and verified it. It really didn't come with anything loaded on it, so I'm not concerned with saving anything. How would I go about doing this. I've done searches to see if I this has happened before but can't seem to find a similar scenario and how it was solved. Thanks
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro with Media Center x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Custom
    CPU
    Intel Core i7-3820 CPU OC @ 3.80GHz
    Motherboard
    Gigabyte G1.Assassin2
    Memory
    Corsair Dominator 16GB Quad Channel DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia by EVGA - GeForce GTX 670 4GB
    Sound Card
    On board Creative SB X-Fi
    Monitor(s) Displays
    acer 24" H243H
    Screen Resolution
    1920 X 1080
    Hard Drives
    Main 500GB Hybrid Drive @ 7,200RPM
    Secondary OCZ SSD Vertex 3 Max IOPS
    PSU
    Silent Pro 1000w gold 80+
    Case
    Azza Hurrican 2000
    Cooling
    Liquid CPU cooler & fans
    Keyboard
    Microsoft Comfort Curve 2000
    Mouse
    Tek Republic Wired Laser Mouse
    Internet Speed
    5ms Ping 5.15Mb/s Download .64Mb/s Upload
    Browser
    Internet Explorer
    Antivirus
    Defender, Malwarebytes
It's really old school, and maybe it's been forgotten, but.....

Whenever I've gotten a computer from someone and I want to make it mine.....

First I go into 'Users' in the control panel and I create a new user, with Admin privileges, but NO password.
Then I reboot the PC and log in to my new user account. Then I can go back to 'Users' and delete the old user.
That will also take out all the personal folders for that old user.

That's a quick and easy way to clean out an old user and not mess with the original OS or the Drivers for the PC.
Drivers are getting more and more hard to find, without having to pay for them.
I can't tell you, how many hours I've wasted trying to find drivers for an older PC. :(

Good Luck,
TechnoMage :cool:
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Win-8.1/Pro/64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Acer X-1200
    CPU
    AMD 2 Core
    Motherboard
    Acer
    Memory
    Crucial, 4GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDEA GeForce 9200
    Sound Card
    On Board
    Monitor(s) Displays
    24" Acer
    Hard Drives
    Sandisk, SSD 500GB
    PSU
    Acer
    Case
    SFF Slimline
    Keyboard
    emachines 101 key
    Mouse
    Logitech Wireless
    Internet Speed
    5 Meg
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    Using Classic Shell on Win-8.1 /pro/64
Thanks for the help. Actually I worked with a tech that supports some of the business software I use, and as it turns out we basically did what TechnoMage suggested. I just didn't worry about reformatting the HD. My credentials are squared away and software installs and usage is going fine. I'm going to go back and review the several suggestions I received, because I know they'll come in handy down the road. Thanks, great forum, Al
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    windows 8.1
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell
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