When the PC is giving problems, if you don't really want to investigate the causes and solutions, you can reinstall Windows quickly, without formatting the disk, also keeping all your personal files so that they are not deleted. We have already seen, in other articles, how to reinstall or clone Windows is now quite simple thanks above all to the functions integrated in the latest versions Windows 8 (see here how to restore Windows 8) and Windows 10.
For the latter, as already seen in the guide to format Windows 10, it is not even necessary to have the CD, or rather the installation DVD.
However, if you want to do a clean installation from scratch, without having a CD or DVD disc available and even without using a USB stick, you can use the WinToHDD program, designed specifically for this eventuality.
WinToHDD is a free program that allows you to install, reinstall or clone Windows without having to copy the installation files to a disk or to the USB stick.
Obviously you will still need the ISO image, but you will not need to burn it to a CD or DVD disc or copy it to a USB stick for installation.
You can proceed with the installation of Windows on another disk or partition on the computer or with the reinstallation on top of the one currently in use.
You can also clone Windows to another disk or partition to create a copy of the installation that also includes programs and personal files.
To make all these operations even simpler than they would be using a CD / DVD or a USB drive, you can always proceed directly from the program interface, without having to restart the PC, without having to change the boot order or enter the Computer BIOS.
The only requirement is to download the ISO image of Windows to your PC, which you can do for free and legally directly from the Microsoft site for any version (Windows 7, 8 or 10) that you want to install.
After installing WinToHDD, launch it and choose one of three functions: Reinstall, install or clone Windows .
As written above, the differences between the three options are:
- Reinstall allows you to reinstall Windows over the current copy.
- New Installation, to install Windows on another computer disk
- Clone to copy the current installation to another disk.
For the first two options you will need the Windows ISO, for the third instead you just have to indicate the disk where to clone the disk.
As for the first option, keep in mind that to reinstall Windows and keep the copy valid with the product key purchased, you must use the ISO of the same version.
Regarding the second option, read the article on how many times you can install a copy of Windows.
For the new installation on another disk it is also necessary to prepare the partition with other programs, because WinToHDD does not support the creation of a dual boot configuration.
Cloning instead is an option that I would personally do with a different program and we have seen the best programs to clone Windows to another disk.
WinToHDD is a program by the same developers as WinToUSB, to copy the PC to a USB drive with all the data, bootable and portable
