In this post, you can know about How To Perform Dell Alienware Factory Reset In Windows 10 easily. Alienware is an American computer hardware subsidiary of Dell.

Their product range is dedicated to gaming computers, which can be identified by their alien-themed designs. Alienware was founded in 1996 by Nelson Gonzalez and Alex Aguila. The development of the company is also associated with Frank Azor, Arthur Lewis, Joe Balerdi, and Michael S. Dell. The company’s corporate headquarters is located in The Hammocks, Miami, Florida.

What About Dell Alienware

Alienware is a popular hardware and system manufacturer firm that was established in 1996 and operates from Miami. Though, it was in 2006 when Dell acquired Alienware and gave it an international appeal by expanding its reach to 35 countries. Today, Alienware systems are majorly used for gaming due to their high-end processing, sound, and display features.

As of now, Alienware offers a wide range of notebooks as well as desktops running on Windows firmware. The range includes 18, 17, 15, 14, 13, 12, and 11.6-inch laptops based on different processors. On the other hand, the desktop range has some popular series like Area-51, Aurora, and X51.

How to Perform Alienware Factory Reset?

There are different ways to restore Alienware laptop to factory settings presently. If you already have a recovery drive for your system, then you can try it, else you can take the assistance of AlienRespawn.

Factory Reset Alienware with a Recovery Drive

Ideally, this is one of the best solutions to reset Alienware to factory settings without any trouble. For this, you need to have a recovery drive already maintained that you can use for troubleshooting. Here’s how you can learn how to perform an Alienware factory reset using a recovery drive.

Step 1. Firstly, you need to create a recovery drive for your Alienware system. For this, attach a USB drive to it that has at least 8-16 GB of free space on it.

Step 2. Now, go to the Start menu and look for the Recovery Drive option to open the wizard to create a new recovery drive. You can also go to its Settings > Recovery to create a recovery drive as well.

Step 3. This will launch a dedicated wizard that you can follow to create a recovery drive. At first, you need to choose if you wish to back up user data or not.

Step 4. Furthermore, select the connected USB drive and make sure that it has enough storage to accommodate the recovery data. Also, the existing data on the USB drive would be erased during the process.

Step 5. Great! Once the recovery drive is created, you can go to your system’s Settings > Recovery and perform an Advanced boot. You can also restart your system and press the relevant function key (F8 or F12 in most cases) to do an advanced boot.

Step 6. Once the Advanced Boot window is loaded, you will get various options on the screen. Just go to the “Troubleshoot” option and make sure that the USB recovery drive is connected to the system.

Step 7. From the listed troubleshooting options, just click on the “Restore from a drive” feature to proceed.

Step 8. You can now simply follow a click-through process to restore Alienware to factory settings. You can also decide if you only wish to remove your files or wipe the entire drive during the recovery process as well.

That’s it! Once the recovery process is completed, your Alienware system would be restarted with factory settings.

Use AlienRespawn to Restore your Computer

Apart from the native features of Windows, you can also use a dedicated application like AlienRespawn to restore your system. AlienRespawn is a popular inbuilt application of Alienware systems that are mostly used to back up and restore our data. It can also help you create a system image that you can later use to perform an Alienware factory reset.

Step 1. Firstly, launch the AlienRespawn application and attach a suitable USB drive to the computer. From here, you can choose to create a system image of your Alienware computer.

Step 2. Afterward, restart your computer and use its designated function key (like F12 or F8) to get the system recovery options. From the provided options, just select and launch the “Alienware Restore and Emergency Backup” field.

Step 3. This will launch a dedicated wizard that you can follow to fix the Alienware update not working issue. Firstly, go to the more backup options and select the “Restore my computer” field.

Step 4. From the list of the available system images, simply select the factory system image and proceed.

Step 5. Furthermore, you can choose to restore your system to factory settings without preserving your files and complete the process.

How to Recover Data Lost Due to Factory Reset?

As you can see, while performing a factory reset on an Alienware laptop or desktop, we might end up losing our important files. In this case, you can take the assistance of Wondershare Recoverit Data Recovery, which is a complete recovery application. It can help you get your lost, deleted, and inaccessible data back that could be lost under various scenarios. The application supports every major data type and also lets us provide a preview of our files. Once you have installed Recoverit on your Alienware, you can follow these steps to recover your data.

Step 1: Choose a location to scan

• Once the application is launched, you can select a location to scan for your lost data. You can pick the entire drive if you want to, a partition, or any folder.

Step 2: Wait for the scan to be completed

• Now, you can just wait for a few minutes for Recoverit to complete the extraction process. You can view the progress from an on-screen indicator and even stop the process if you want to.

Step 3: Preview and restore your data

• Once the process is over, you can view all the extracted files listed under various categories. There are also various filters on the side that you can use to search for your files.

In the end, you can even preview your photos, videos, documents, etc. and select what you wish to save. Click on the “Recover” button now and just browse to a location to save your data.

Alienware Factory Reset Windows 10

If you are using a Dell Alienware laptop or desktop, sometimes you may need to reset the machine to its defaults.

The common reasons for Windows 10 Alienware factory reset include:

• You want to restore your computer to its previous or original state. A factory reset can delete all the installed programs & drivers and return settings to their defaults.
• Resetting can help reclaim the drive space and optimize the computer performance when some unnecessary apps consume disk space and use the processing power.
• To avoid data leaks, an Alienware factory reset is very important before selling your machine to others.
• To fix some Windows problems, you can choose to reset your computer.

What to do before Windows 10 Alienware Factory Reset?

As mentioned above, a factory reset is a way to restore your machine to its original state. All your data including programs, files, settings, etc. are removed. So, make sure you have made a complete backup of your data before taking any further steps. If not, proceed to this part to know what you should do.

To back up crucial files, you need to use a professional Windows backup software. MiniTool ShadowMaker is worthy of being recommended there. As an all-in-one backup program for Windows and servers, it makes strong data protection since it supports backing up files, folders, operating systems, partitions & disks, syncing files, cloning disks, etc.

With it, you are able to schedule backups in simple clicks, create differential & incremental backups. Importantly, it allows you to create a bootable USB drive, USB hard disk, or CD/DVD for disaster recovery when the Alienware machine fails to boot up.

See how to back up your files on Dell Alienware in Windows 10:

Step 1: Install MiniTool ShadowMaker on your computer and then launch it to keep using the trial edition.

Step 2: On the Backup interface, you see system partitions are selected as the backup source. To back up your files, click the Source section, go to Folders and Files, then check all the items you want to back up and click OK.

Step 3: Go back to the Backup menu and click Destination to decide where you want to store the backups. Usually, it can be an external hard drive, USB drive, SSD, etc.

Step 4: Finally, click the Back-up Now button to execute the back-up task.

After finishing the backup operation, now it is time for Windows 10 Alienware factory reset. Well, how to do this work? Move to the next part.

How to Factory Reset Alienware Laptop or Desktop in Windows 10

Windows 10 offers you many options to reset your Dell Alienware to its original settings, including the Reset option, recovery drive, and installation media. Now, let’s see them one by one.

Alienware Factory Reset via the Reset Option

To perform a factory reset for Windows 10, you can reset your PC. This can let you choose to keep your files or move them, and then reinstall Windows operating system.

If you can run your Alienware laptop or desktop, directly go to the Settings menu and choose Update & Security. Then, click Recovery and select Get started from the Reset this PC section. In the pop-up window, select Keep my files to remove apps and settings but keep your personal files. Next, finish all the operations by following the on-screen instructions.

If you cannot boot up your Dell Alienware machine, enter into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE). Then, navigate to Troubleshoot > Reset this PC > Keep my files, choose an account, enter the password and click Reset to perform the Alienware factory reset operation.

Alienware Factory Reset via Created USB Recovery Drive

In Windows 10, you can create a recovery drive in advance. When the PC can’t start, you can use a recovery drive to reset it or troubleshoot some problems. Also, you can use it to reinstall Windows if you back up system files to this drive.

So, how to use the created recovery drive for Windows 10 Alienware factory reset? See these steps:

• Make sure the USB drive is connected properly. Then, press the appropriate key to boot from the USB drive instead of your hard drive upon boot-up.

• Select your keyboard layout.

• Click the Troubleshoot section and then choose Recover from a drive. This can reinstall Windows from the recovery drive connected to this PC and remove all your files & apps.

• In the next window, you see two options – Just remove my files and clean the drive fully. Choose one based on your needs.

• After all ready to go, click the Recover button.

After the recovery, Windows is reinstalled, and you need to perform a new computer setup again.

Alienware Factory Reset Windows 10 via Installation Media

In addition to these ways above, you can reinstall the operating system to reset your Alienware PC to its defaults.

You can get a Windows 10 ISO file from the Internet to create an installation disc or USB drive or directly download Media Creation Tool to create media to install the latest version of Windows 10. Learn more about How to Create Bootable USB from ISO Windows 10 for Clean Installation.

Then, start the installation:

• Start your PC from the created installation media.

• Choose the language, time and currency format and keyboard.

• Click Install Now.

• Choose I don’t have a product key. The copy of Windows can be activated later automatically.

• Choose an edition of Windows 10 that you want to install.

• After accepting license terms, choose the second type of installation.

• Choose a partition to install Windows. The process is beginning.

After all the operations are finished, your Alienware PC is entirely clean, and you need to re-configure it.