Will selecting remove everything and reinstall Windows delete both HDDs in my partition split?

[Deej91]

Sorry if this is in the wrong category, wasn't sure whether to put it in storage or Windows 8.

Anyway, I'm planning on putting together my new computer this weekend. My problem is that I want to use my old hard drives but have just realised that one of my drives is split into C and E drives (it was like that when I bought the PC). I just got rid of all the files in my C drive and put them on to another hard drive which has no more space.

If I select the delete everything and reinstall option is it going to delete everything from both partitions? I don't want to lose the files on my E drive.

I don't really know anything about this kind of thing so any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[USAFRet]

It shouldn't. Depends on exactly what checkboxes you click during the install.
What exactly is on the drive, and what OS are you installing?

But for any major change, you should have anything critical saved elsewhere and offline during the process.

 

[Deej91]

It shouldn't. Depends on exactly what checkboxes you click during the install.
What exactly is on the drive, and what OS are you installing?

But for any major change, you should have anything critical saved elsewhere and offline during the process.

I just clicked on it to see what options came up and it said some files are missing and won't let me progress.

I plan to reinstall Windows 8.1, although my current PC came with Vista and I then upgraded to 8. I found the Windows 8 key using a program so hopefully that will work.

I just have images, videos and games on my E drive. I don't really care about the games as I can reinstall those but I need the images.

Is it hard to manually uninstall all motherboard and CPU drivers before building my new PC? I'm only upgrading the case, motherboard and CPU as I upgraded the PSU and GPU not too long ago.

 

[USAFRet]

A key for 8.1 won't work with a Windows 8 install.
How exactly did you change from Vista to Win 8? What exactly did you buy? A full install disk or some Upgrade thing?

 

[Deej91]

A key for 8.1 won't work with a Windows 8 install.
How exactly did you change from Vista to Win 8? What exactly did you buy? A full install disk or some Upgrade thing?

Would it not be a Windows 8 key? It was just some offer to upgrade from either XP or Vista to Windows 8. From that I installed 8.1 as it was just a free update.

Vista was already installed on the pre-built PC I bought a while ago and I've just upgraded parts in it over the years.

 

[USAFRet]

A key for 8.1 won't work with a Windows 8 install.
How exactly did you change from Vista to Win 8? What exactly did you buy? A full install disk or some Upgrade thing?

Would it not be a Windows 8 key? It was just some offer to upgrade from either XP or Vista to Windows 8. From that I installed 8.1 as it was just a free update.

Vista was already installed on the pre-built PC I bought a while ago and I've just upgraded parts in it over the years.

When you changed to 8.1, it generated a whole new license key.
You can try it, but don't be surprised when it doesn't work.

 

[Deej91]

A key for 8.1 won't work with a Windows 8 install.
How exactly did you change from Vista to Win 8? What exactly did you buy? A full install disk or some Upgrade thing?

Would it not be a Windows 8 key? It was just some offer to upgrade from either XP or Vista to Windows 8. From that I installed 8.1 as it was just a free update.

Vista was already installed on the pre-built PC I bought a while ago and I've just upgraded parts in it over the years.

When you changed to 8.1, it generated a whole new license key.
You can try it, but don't be surprised when it doesn't work.

Just downloaded both the 8 and 8.1 installers and it is an 8 key. I'll just have to sort out my files and make sure to back up things I definitely want to keep. Thanks for the help!