How To Reset To Factory Settings On Windows 8 Laptop

When dealing with laptops given to an end user courtesy of their office, it’s imperative that you have all your personal files on a removable storage media. What if you’re too busy to do all that and were hoping to leave all data backup to your last day at the office? With the advent of Windows 8, users now have the option to leave the OS as is but remove their personal files if they need to hand down the laptop to someone without having to reinstall the OS from scratch. This tutorial will show you how to reset to factory settings on your Windows 8 laptop.

Before following through this tutorial, please make sure that all your critical files and folders are backed up/saved onto an external storage device. You will need a bootable USB installer for Windows 8 in order to proceed. Keep your laptop powered up via the AC adapter in spite of having battery backup.

1. With your laptop powered up and sign in to Windows 8 press the Windows key + C simultaneously.

2. You should see Settings Charm bar pop up.

3. Click on Change PC Settings.

4. Click on Update and Recovery (or you can click on General, if so then skip to step 6).

5. Click on Recovery.

6. On the right pane you will be greeted with two options:
First being Refresh your PC without affecting your files (i.e. Refresh)
and
Remove everything and reinstall Windows (i.e. Reset)

7. Click on Get started on the second option.


8. Click on Next.

9. Choose the drives you want to remove. We’re choosing Only the drive where Windows is installed. If you want to wipe the entire (physical) drive clean you can click on the second option. Please keep in mind though that you will lose everything in the latter, so please make sure you’ve got a backup of the data on the drives.

10. Choose the option on how you want to clean the drive(s). We chose Just remove my files. Click on your chose to proceed.

11. Click on Reset to initiate the process.

12. Your laptop will reboot and begin the reset process.

13. In the following screen, input the necessary credentials to complete your installation of Windows 8.

You have now successfully rest your Windows 8 laptop to factory settings.