Introduction
If your HP laptop has gone old and you wish to replace it by a new one, then before you sell it off or give it to someone, you should restore its current settings to default factory settings. This method is called as hard-resetting your laptop. It is effective in removing all your personal data and applications safely.
HP brand offer a wide range of recovery tools that will help you restore your computer to its original factory state. Read this article to identify the right type of recovery tool for your purpose. This article tells you about the step by step method to hard-reset your HP laptop.
Method 1: Factory reset an HP laptop via Windows Settings
If you are able to sign into the HP laptop normally, then you can hard reset your HP laptop via Windows Settings.
Type “reset” in the Windows search box. Now select “Reset this PC” option.
Click on Get started.
Now select an option that shows “Keep my files” or “Remove everything”.
- If you wish to keep all your personal files, customizations, and applications, then click on Keep my files -> Next -> Reset. This will begin re-installation of the operating system on your computer system. Now restart your phone. This process completes factory-resetting on your HP laptop.
- If you wish to remove all the applications, personal files, and settings, on your phone, then click on Remove everything. You will see different options like Only the Drive, All Drives, Remove My files and Remove files and clean the drive.
- If you want to remove everything from a particular drive, where Windows OS is installed, click “Only the Drive” where Windows OS is installed. Or
- If you wish to recycle the computer and remove all apps and files, then click on “All drives”. Or
- If you wish to delete only your files, then click on “Remove my files”. If you wish to clean the drive, then click on “Remove files and clean the drive”. Or
- Now click on Reset. Wait for some time to execute reset procedure successfully on your laptop. This will complete the factory reset procedure.
Method 2: Factory reset your HP laptop through Windows Recovery Environment
If you are not able to log into the HP laptop normally, then you need to use Windows Recovery Environment to factory reset your HP laptop. Follow the below steps to do the job.
- Ensure that your HP laptop is in off mode. All external devices such as printers, USB drives, etc. are disconnected from the laptop. Also remove any recently added internal hardware from the computer.
- Switch on the HP laptop. Immediately press the “F11 key” continually till you see a “Choose an option screen”.
- Click on Troubleshoot.
- Click “Reset this PC”.
- Select from the options, “Keep my files” or “Remove everything”.
If you wish to hard-reset your laptop while keeping all your data intact, choose “Keep my files” option, then click on Reset. This will start the re-installation process of your Operating System. You are done with the factory-reset procedure.
If you wish to delete all your personal files, then click on “Remove everything” option. Continue with the following steps. Based on the type of factory reset of HP laptop, you will be provided with four options to choose from.
- If you wish to remove everything only from the hard drive where Windows Operating System is installed, then choose the drive where Windows Operating System is installed.
- If you wish to remove all files and apps from all drives on your PC, then choose “All drives”.
- If you want to delete only your files from the laptop, then choose the option “Just remove my files”.
- If you wish to clean the drive, then choose “Fully clean the drive”. Now click on the Reset button. This will start the procedure to factory reset your HP laptop. The entire will take a few minutes to complete.
Factory reset has to be the last option to reset your system. It is mostly done when you are no longer using the system. By choosing the right options, you can easily factory reset your HP laptop.
