Is windows 10 s free if you have to reload your laptop after a harddrive failure. Is the a utility to get rid of a password on your drive

Windows 10 is generally not free if you need to reload it after a hard drive failure unless you have a valid license for it. If your laptop originally came with Windows 10, you should be able to reinstall it using the recovery media or the recovery partition that came with your device. If you do not have a recovery option, you may need to purchase a new license.

Regarding the utility to remove a password from your new hard drive, there are various tools available depending on the type of encryption or password protection you are dealing with. If the drive is encrypted with BitLocker, you would need the recovery key or password to unlock it. If you're looking to remove a password from a non-encrypted drive, you can typically do this through the drive's properties in Windows or using third-party software designed for drive management. However, specific utilities and methods may vary based on your exact requirements and the type of password protection in place.

Hello,

As long as you have valid license, OEM or retail, you can go ahead and reinstall.

If you purchase the license from third party and used the 25-digit key, make sure you remove the license first.

Please type cmd in the search on the taskbar. Don't press enter key yet. Instead, choose "run as administrator" to launch Command Prompt.

Run these commands one a time:

slmgr /upk
slmgr /cpky

Then you can go ahead and do the clean install. If the disk is encrypted with bitlocker, clean install can bypass that and reload Windows.

The following steps should be done on a working Windows computer:

Download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft's official website. https://www.microsoft.com/software-download/windows10

Run the tool and select "Create installation media for another PC."

Choose your language, edition, and architecture (32 or 64-bit) and select "Next."

Choose "USB flash drive" as the media to use for the installation and select "Next."

Connect a USB flash drive with at least 8 GB of free space to your computer.

Select the USB flash drive you want to use, and then select "Next."

The tool will then download the required files and create the installation media.

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Now these steps will  be done on your problematic computer:

Go to the computer's BIOS boot menu to have it boot from the USB drive.

Follow the on-screen instructions to install Windows 10, making sure to choose "Custom install" and select the option to delete all existing partitions.

Once the installation is complete, you'll have a clean installation of Windows 10 on your computer.