Starting a new Windows setup. Looking for assistance.
Starting a new Windows setup. Looking for assistance.
Your laptop has been acting strangely since you deleted some registry files in September. Windows recovery restored W 8.1 quickly, but now you're experiencing issues with admin rights, the .NET Framework, and general software glitches. During spring break, you're planning a fresh Windows install and want it up and running by about 80% within a week. You have a USB drive with an ISO of Windows 8.1. Can you format the hard drive into two partitions and install the new OS there? Once installed, you can copy your files between the partitions or back up to the cloud/flash drives before reinstalling? Thanks for your help.
You can technically isolate a partition, but you’ll face challenges with the boot sector. The installation of Windows may not succeed fully since it won’t generate the required 350MB partition for booting and security. It’s better to back up your data elsewhere and avoid leaving any remnants on the device.
I'm not confident about this approach, since the system might block installation on that specific partition. You could try reformatting the entire drive, then accessing Disk Management, reducing the size of your current drive, and creating a new partition using raw space. After that, you can boot from USB again and install there.
Attempting to start fresh Windows using a partition seems unlikely to work. In fact, I haven’t installed Windows in an existing partition before now—only on Linux. This makes me unsure about potential issues others have discussed. However, if you use a different partition for another operating system, your primary OS may not recognize the disk even in the computer management tool, meaning you’ll likely need to back up your data beforehand since transferring it from Windows won’t be possible. At least with Linux, I managed to double boot successfully from the same drive.
It depends on the installation method. A fresh install from a Windows 8.1 USB drive typically removes any OEM copies, so the original Lenovo branding should disappear. The system will likely show the Microsoft logo instead of the Lenovo logo when you boot up.
The recovery partition size will depend on your specific setup. Currently it appears as a 16GB or 1000MB section, but its actual usable space may vary based on what was deleted earlier.