Laptop-wiping worry

I’m about to remove my laptop hard drive, connect it to my desktop and wipe the drive before returning it to the laptop for a brand-new Windows install. But I’ve realised that, when I put back the drive, there will be no OEM partition on the drive containing laptop drivers to recognise the optical drive or USB ports, and there’s no laptop drivers disc. How would I install these drivers to ensure they would recognise the Windows install disc when I boot? [ GERALD GIBSON ]

Nick Peers replies: Your laptop’s ability to boot from a DVD or USB drive is not linked to the currently installed OS system. It’s handled by your PC’s BIOS or UEFI.

You can test this now with your Windows bootable USB flash drive. Restart your laptop with the drive plugged in and it will do one of three things: automatically boot to the recovery media; offer you the option of pressing any key to boot from the recovery media; or boot back

into Windows as normal. If it goes straight to Windows, restart your laptop again, but look for a message that flashes up on first boot inviting you to press a key to access a boot menu — such as F11 — or enter the BIOS/UEFI configuration tool — typically Del or F2. If the boot menu option is presented to you, press the key and a boot menu will appear — check to see whether your USB drive is listed; if it is, select it and then press Enter to boot from it. If it isn’t, check that the configuration tool you’re using supports USB booting — if it does, make sure that the USB drive is listed.

If it doesn’t, you’ll need to burn a Windows 10 install DVD using the Media Creation Tool, and then boot from that.