If you are reading this article, you want to know how to do a clean installation of Windows 8.1 on your Windows tablet without using USB OTG and a USB flash drive.

We will be using the Lenovo ThinkPad 8 for this article.

  1. First of all we need to grab a Windows 8.1 ISO file that matches your license key, grab it from:

  2. Then, when downloaded, right-click the ISO file and then select ‘Mount’ to mount the ISO as a virtual DVD drive.

  3. Just run ‘setup.exe’ to start the installation process.

  4. Make sure your ThinkPad 8 is plugged in to charge.

  5. Now make sure you select to do a complete reset, discarding ‘keeping personal files’.

  6. It will take an 30-60min to complete.

  7. Then go to ‘Control Panel’ > ‘Administrative Tools’ > ‘Disk Cleanup’.

  8. There you will see a blue link at the bottom of the dialog or window saying ‘Clean up system files’. Just select all files in the list. You should be freeing up around 25GB - 26GB doing so. Which increased the free space from 14GB to 40GB on my ThinkPad 8 (64GB).

  9. Go to http://support.lenovo.com/ and download ‘ThinkVantage System Update’.

  10. Run ‘ThinkVantage System Update’, download and install all drivers.

  11. Reboot

  12. Done

Quite easy right? No need to grab an USB OTG adapter.

Possible problems you might encounter:

  • You need enough free space before following this guide. The more the merrier.

Models this guide applies to:

  • ThinkPad 8

  • ThinkPad 10

  • Well just basically anything running Windows 8 or later.