XPS 8930, clean Windows 11 install

Question

My XPS 8930 came with Windows 10 and is some three years old. A couple of years ago I had the motherboard replaced due to BIOS update gone wrong. It was luckily covered while under warranty.

I have previously done Factory Reset and then upgraded to Windows 11 via WU.

I would like to do a complete fresh install with Windows 11 only from this link https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows11

My C-drive is a Toshiba KXG60ZNV512G NVMe

However, if doing this fresh install of Windows11, would that erase everything on my C-drive, including the Dell Recovery Partition?

Thank you for your time,

JOcean · Answer

A clean install will, during the installation, give you the choice to keep your files. If you elect to do a custom installation instead it will erase everything during the install. This page at Cleverfiles has way more information. And this YouTube video is a great tutorial that will help with that installation.

Chino de Oro · Answer

Not necessarily, you can leave that partition alone during installation process. For example below using a borrowed web image, drive 0 is target drive for installation, deleting partition 1, 2, and 3, leaving partition 4 alone as it contains the recovery image.

partition selection.jpg

Tedco · Answer

Thanks for your replies.

I suppose I would like to keep Dell Recovery Partition in case something went wrong with the Windows 11 clean install.

I will have a look at the links provided and a good read.

Thank you all for your time,

RoHe · Answer

@Tedco - Why do you care about the Dell Recovery partition?

If you updated to Win 11, that partition is probably (likely) no longer accessible now. Besides, even if it was accessible, it would only (re)install Win 10...

XPS Desktops

XPS 8930, clean Windows 11 install

Was this post helpful?