After I upgraded from Windows 8 & Windows 7 to Windows 10, it was strange for me to find out that many settings were disabled for me. It was greyed out with red text saying that “Few things are controlled by local administrator.” It puzzled me that even though I was the local administrator, Windows thought that PC belonged to someone else. The only way out of the problem was to either reinstall Windows 10 or Clean Install Windows 10 also called as Reset Windows 10. That’s what I am going to share in this post.
Note: It can happen even after Feature Updates of Windows 10
Reason for Few things are controlled by the local administrator
After asking a few people around, I got hold of the problem. During the upgrade, the setup program was supposed to ask me if I owned the PC or did it belong to the company. This option never came to me during the upgrade process. Sadly, there is no way to get rid of this. No registry hack worked either. The only option was to Clean install Windows 10.
I am guessing that since a Microsoft Account was already on the Windows 8.1 PC, the upgrade process thought that the PC belongs to an organization with Live.com account?
How to Clean Install Windows 10 after upgrading without an ISO
While using the ISO or creating a bootable USB are one of the options, Windows 10 offers an inbuilt solution to reset Windows 10 computer to get a clean install. This process will replace existing system files with new, reset settings, and make sure it is as good as a fresh Windows 10 install.
- Go to Settings > Update and Recovery Recovery > Reset This PC
- Next, choose if you want to keep your personal files or delete all of them
It will restart your PC in Recovery Mode and Windows 10 will install again. You will get an option to keep your files and program or get rid of them. You will also have an option to securely erase your data, which is useful if you are handing over the PC to somebody else.
Coming back to my problem of –Few things are controlled by the local administrator– during the installation process, you will get the option to choose to whom the PC belongs. You should select “I Do,” and it will take care of all the greyed out options in Windows 10.
We hope you have learned to Reset or Clean Install Windows 10 without an ISO or USB. These steps are also useful if some of the Windows 10 settings are grayed out.
