The ultimate guide to reinstalling Windows

There are many reasons why you may want to reinstall Windows on your PC. The most common is hardware change – a fresh installation will often run better than one that was previously installed on a different PC, so if you’re swapping out motherboards and CPUs, it’s worth doing it to squeeze the maximum performance out of your new hardware.

Then there are reasons of maintenance: Perhaps something has gone wrong deep inside the operating system, a botched driver installation or damage from some malicious software affecting how your PC runs. Maybe Windows is just unbearably slow, and you don’t know why.

All of these are good reasons to reinstall Windows, and it’s a quick and easy process these days. And while a complete reinstall is your nuclear option, wiping away all traces of what came before, there are other options – Reset and Refresh – that can help you out too, saving your documents if you’re not so hot on the backup regime.

Here is not a discussion of why you should reinstall the OS – you’ll know when the time is right – but how to do it. While there are different methods, they all rely on being able to download the OS from Microsoft’s servers, so you’ll need a PC with an internet connection. Do not let your PC get so bad that you can’t fire up a web browser!