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June 30th, 2019 10:00
Does reinstalling the OS void warranty?
I have a Latitude 3189 which is like a year old now, I personally clean install my non-school laptop every year, and I know it won't harm since the warranty has expired for ages - but if I do a clean install of the OS on the Latitude 3189, will this void any warranty? It's currently running Windows 10 Education Pro, and I'm planning to install Windows 10 again. Also, does it need to be Education Pro or would the Home version also be fine for this?
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jphughan
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June 30th, 2019 13:00
Reinstalling the OS absolutely does not void your warranty. If it did, then enterprises that maintained corporate PC images for deployment to the systems they purchase would never maintain their warranty coverage. The edition of Windows 10 you use won't affect your warranty coverage, but obviously you'll need to have a license for whatever version you install, either the one that came with the system from the factory or a license you purchased through some other means. If you haven't already, you can look up the Service Tag of your system on support.dell.com and go to the System Configuration section to see what version of Windows the system is licensed for from the factory. And on a side note, I really wouldn't recommend doing clean installs every year. I used to do clean installs every 12-18 months back in the Windows XP days because things just seemed to get noticeably slower after that time, but starting Vista and ever since, I've found that that isn't really necessary anymore unless maybe your work/hobby includes installing and uninstalling a bunch of apps that you just like to tinker with. On my current laptop, I just did a clean install of Win10 1903 when it was released, but even that was only because I felt "it was time", not because I was having any issues. But my last clean install before that time I think was for Win10 1607, almost 3 years earlier.