how to reformat windows 10 and delete everything reddit

This method is ideal for internal drives that don’t have your operating system installed, USB flash drives, other external storage devices, and any entire partitions you want to erase. Also, you can’t perform a full format of your Windows system drive while you’re running Windows from it. Before you do this, bear in mind that this will completely erase all files on the drive. To write zeros over the contents of any drive, all you have to do is perform a full format of the drive. Assuming an attacker can’t get your encryption key, they wouldn’t be able to recover deleted files from a drive-they wouldn’t even be able to access files that aren’t yet deleted. Do note that you have up to 60 days to regret your decision and contact Microsoft about taking your account back but after that period, everything will be gone forever.By the way, if a drive is encrypted, this provides a lot of additional protection. After you tick all the boxes, give Microsoft a reason for closing your account and click on the “Mark account for closure” button. This is very obvious stuff and you should already know that deleting your account will also make associated services unavailable. Microsoft will require you to tick six different boxes that confirm you know what you are doing and that closing your Microsoft account means that you will lose access to your email, that your Xbox account may not work properly and so forth. Once you have confirmed that everything is ready to go, click on the “Next” button. The company will inform you about some necessary precautions you should take including disabling the reset protection in your Windows phone so that you do not find yourself locked out from your phone. This is the last chance you have so spend some time going through the menus to check if you have left something behind.Īfter you are all done, follow this link to get yourself to the “Close account” page on the Microsoft website.

Sign in to your account here and make sure that you empty out your wallet, cancel your subscriptions and backed up all information that you may want to keep for later. There is no way to completely delete a Microsoft account from the Windows 10 settings so you will have to go online and delete it from the company’s website instead. And thus the first part of the account deletion process is complete. Click on the Remove button and confirm your choice by clicking on “Yes”.

Click on it and you will see two buttons: Manage and Remove.

Once you sign in the other account, head over to that same “Your account” menu and scroll down till you see your Microsoft account.

How to reformat windows 10 and delete everything reddit