What do I do if there are multiple partitions when installing Windows?

Question

My computer has been acting a bit weird lately. So I decided to do a repair install of Windows 10. Unfortunately after it installed and restarted, the computer wouldn't boot up anymore. Luckily I backed up all my files beforehand so I want to do a clean install of Windows.

At the stage where it says "where do you install Windows", it gives me a lot of partitions. I have a Dell computer and on my primary hard drive it gives me 8 partitions to choose from. One does say primary drive, but for some reason Windows is not installing on that partition (I reset it and everything). The other partitions are listed as recovery, system and there's one called MSR.

What I want to know, is whether it's safe for me to delete these partitions. I can still install Windows with them there, but I have to set the primary partition as unallocated space. Where should I go from here?

Solution

If you don't need to save any data from the disk, go ahead and delete all partitions. Windows Installer will create several in the minimum configuration that it needs. You can choose "I don't have an activation key" when prompted because Windows 10 will recognize your hardware later by checking in with MS. Fortunately, you have your important files. Worrying about saving local files complicates the process.

Comments

[skillz21]

What about the partitions made by Dell? I'm assuming I don't need them?

[Christopher Hostage]

No difference as far as the Windows installer cares. How did you make the install disk? Are you using a generic Windows install image or one provided by Dell?

[skillz21]

generic windows install image created by the Media Creation tool. I tried installing, but it gives me an error saying that the hard drive needs to be formatted in FAT32... I assume this is because the USB is FAT32, So I am using a different PC to format it to NTFS and running the Media Creation tool on that.