If you’re looking to wipe your Dell laptop and restore it to its factory settings, you’re in the right place. There are several reasons why you might want to do this, such as if your drive gets corrupt, you need to sell or give away your laptop, or if you forget your password.
Before you start the process, it’s crucial to ensure that your computer is connected to a power source. You don’t want to encounter a power failure during this process. Once you’ve done this, it’s pretty straightforward.
To start the process, locate the shift key on your keyboard, and either hold the power button and the shift key and let the computer restart or navigate with your mouse to the power button and hold the shift key while selecting restart.
Once the computer restarts, you’ll have three options. If it continues to load Windows, use a USB device, restore from a backup (if you had one), or a DVD drive, or troubleshoot. In this case, select troubleshoot.
You’ll have three other options – reset this PC, factory image restore, and advanced option. Choose reset this PC, and you’ll have two additional options – keep your files or remove everything. If you want to do a clean reset, select remove everything.
After selecting remove everything, the computer will restart, and it will be a series of questions before the computer starts resetting. Ensure that you acknowledge that everything will be wiped off the computer. Once this process starts, you can’t undo it, and every document and file you have on the computer will be deleted. The only things that will be reinstalled are whatever programs or documents that came on the computer when you purchased it, and it will bring it back to factory settings.
The process could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours at most. Once the computer restarts, you can continue to set up the computer, and it should be like you took it out of the box when you first purchased it.
In conclusion, there’s a built-in partition on Dell laptops that allows you to format and reimage the drive and bring it back to factory settings. It’s pretty straightforward, and you can do it even if you forget your passcode. It’s an excellent way to sell or give away your laptop while ensuring that your data is secure.