Windows install for another computer

[GoFigureItOut]

A friend of mine has a Lenovo C365 all-in-one. The company she got it from setup a BIOS password and its making it impossible to boot from USB flash drive. Her system is pretty much hosed with a lot of viruses. It originally came with Windows 8, but has been upgraded to 10. I was wondering if I could take the hard drive out and install Windows 10 on it from my PC, then let the set up finish from the Lenovo? I've read several success stories regarding Windows 7. Not sure if the process is the same or if Microsoft made it harder

 

[Jetster]

Yes you can

 

[newtekie1]

As long as it can boot, you should be able to restart it holding down the Left Shift Key on the keyboard. You don't even have to log in, you can do it from the lock screen.

Then in there is an option to reset Windows. That will do a fresh install of Windows for you.

Of course, if you are already willing to tear the think apart to get at the hard drive, you might as well just find the BIOS battery and remove it for 30 seconds then put it back in. That should delete the password in the BIOS.

It looks like it is pretty easy to get access too. Follow the steps in this guide for removing the EMI shield on page 33 and the battery should be right under that:

https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/desktop_pub/lenovo_c360-365_hmm-none-touch-model_20131107.pdf

 

[GoFigureItOut]

I used the left shift key option to get to all of the advanced options. Windows could not do a fresh install. I'm not sure if it was because it was upgraded from 8 to 10.

 

[newtekie1]

In that case, time to pull the battery.

 

[GoFigureItOut]

When I hook the drive up to my machine to install Windows 10. I get a drive not found error message. The hard drive has a GPT partition. I changed it to MBR and I still get the error.

The computer I'm using is a Dell Optiplex 780. I changed some BIOS settings and the drive still doesn't get picked up

[Solved] I connected the hard drive to a newer PC (Dell Optiplex 9010), boot from my flash drive, let Windows 10 install to the drive and interrupted the reboot process so it could finish in the Lenovo C365. All is working well!

 

[newtekie1]

I'm still interested in why if you went through the hassle of opening it up to get the to the hard drive, you didn't spend the extra 5 minutes and just open it a little further to remove the battery and remove the BIOS password so it isn't an issue down the road.

 

[GoFigureItOut]

Well, accessing the hard drive was simple. All I had to do is slide down the plastic cover to gain access. I didn't want to tear down the machine because the owner of it isn't very level-headed. It was a little hassle, but nothing compared to if I had made a boo-boo and render the all-in-one a paper weight.

Another friend of mine had the same machine and removing of the cmos battery didn't remove the password. Even BIOS jumpers didn't do anything. Better safe than sorry