How to re-install Windows on a corrupted system?

[Aizen Shisuke]

My laptop was idling next to me while I was gaming on my pc. I went to it to look something up on it and suddenly couldn't click on anything. Then windows Explorer just stopped. Background disappeared, task bar gone, start button gone too. With no other options, I force shut down the system.

Upon restarting, I got a message that windows couldn't run properly and needed to restart. Then the restarting diagnosis failed and I was given the option to restart or do something else. From there I tried restoring to a back up point from 10 days ago but it said some windows files were corrupted. I hit the option to check the corrupted files and it sat on that loading bar for about 6 hours before the battery finally died. It was almost done too. But I don't feel like waiting 6 hours again.

I guess now my only option is to re-install windows from a flash drive. But how do I mount the drive and actually get to the point of reinstalling windows when I can't even boot the system? I can go to the Advanced Options and choose "Recover from Removable Drive" but then the system just freezes, restarts, and I'm back to where I started.

 

[bjornl]

Go in to your bios and select the USB drive as your boot drive.

 

[m7mod]

if your copy of windows is on a usb drive or a dvd , have you tried to go to bios then boot the put the (usb , dvd ) that you have windows on on the top then save and restart "f10" ?

 

[Aizen Shisuke]

Go in to your bios and select the USB drive as your boot drive.

Speed Demon
if your copy of windows is on a usb drive or a dvd , have you tried to go to bios then boot the put the (usb , dvd ) that you have windows on on the top then save and restart "f10" ?

I can't. F8, F10, and F2 all do nothing whatsoever. Just boots as normal then fails.

 

[m7mod]

Go in to your bios and select the USB drive as your boot drive.

Speed Demon
if your copy of windows is on a usb drive or a dvd , have you tried to go to bios then boot the put the (usb , dvd ) that you have windows on on the top then save and restart "f10" ?

I can't. F8, F10, and F2 all do nothing whatsoever. Just boots as normal then fails.

DEL ??? XD

 

[Aizen Shisuke]

Go in to your bios and select the USB drive as your boot drive.

Speed Demon
if your copy of windows is on a usb drive or a dvd , have you tried to go to bios then boot the put the (usb , dvd ) that you have windows on on the top then save and restart "f10" ?

I can't. F8, F10, and F2 all do nothing whatsoever. Just boots as normal then fails.

DEL ??? XD

I have no idea how this type of thread works. Do you have any sort of advice on the issue at hand?

 

[bjornl]

He was suggesting other keys might go to BIOS. I'd suggest you google what key takes you to BIOS on that laptop. Try pulling the battery out to make sure it is OFF. What happens if you just pull the HD out and replace it?
Because you are describing different systems across multiple components. The failure to get in to BIOS, the failed windows components, etc... If it is a new PC check what the warranty is like.

 

[Aizen Shisuke]

He was suggesting other keys might go to BIOS. I'd suggest you google what key takes you to BIOS on that laptop. Try pulling the battery out to make sure it is OFF. What happens if you just pull the HD out and replace it?
Because you are describing different systems across multiple components. The failure to get in to BIOS, the failed windows components, etc... If it is a new PC check what the warranty is like.

The warranty is up and, you're not going to fucking believe this, but the battery pack is hidden inside the laptop. There's no chance of removing it without breaking something, as there are no visible screws anywhere.

There is some good news though. On one of it's reboot cycles, it finally succeeded in diagnosing the pc and is now in the process of factory resetting itself. I hope it works out.

 

[Aizen Shisuke]

He was suggesting other keys might go to BIOS. I'd suggest you google what key takes you to BIOS on that laptop. Try pulling the battery out to make sure it is OFF. What happens if you just pull the HD out and replace it?
Because you are describing different systems across multiple components. The failure to get in to BIOS, the failed windows components, etc... If it is a new PC check what the warranty is like.

The warranty is up and, you're not going to fucking believe this, but the battery pack is hidden inside the laptop. There's no chance of removing it without breaking something, as there are no visible screws anywhere.

There is some good news though. On one of it's reboot cycles, it finally succeeded in diagnosing the pc and is now in the process of factory resetting itself. I hope it works out.

It finished repairing itself and made it to the stuff you see on a new laptop. Setting the time, customizing, and all that. But all of a sudden, it's shit slow. The very first screen is selecting a language. I hit English and it takes around 3 minutes to move to the Time screen. After dealing with that and getting to the Network page, it freezes all together. I click on my wifi and it just freezes. I get a little message in the corner saying that Windows has stopped working, along with an option to end the process or wait. This has happened 4 times so far, each time freezing at the Network page.

 

[LukeFatwalker]

Have you tried running Startup Repairs? I'd try that.

 

[bjornl]

Startup repair is not going to help a PC which has problems with huge slow downs during the actual installation.
Complete the install and do the best you can with some diagnostics. Such as HWMon to check the actual CPU speed (it might be thermalling due to the CPU fan being obstructed or dead). Run chkdsk /f/r to check and attempt to repair the disk.

But given the inability to enter the BIOS and your host of other problems, I'm not optimistic. It is an old PC (off warranty) with multiple symptoms all pointing to it being at or near end of life.

 

[Aizen Shisuke]

I posted my issues on a few subreddits and many people told me that it's an HDD problem more than any software issues. I will see if the warranty is still valid.

 

[wpgwpg]

When you've gotten your system back like you want it, I urge you to get yourself an external hard drive and a good 3rd party backup program. You can set it up to do everything automagically at the time and frequency of your choice. 1 TB external hard drives are about $55 these days and a really good FREE backup program is the Easeus Todo Backup Free. That can save you a lot of time and frustration the next time something like this happens. Sooner or later it happens to all computers for one reason or another.

Good luck.

 

[ChaoticWolf]

If you have a blank disc sitting around somewhere in your house (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW) go on a working computer, download an iso image of Windows 7, burn the iso image to the blank disc, put it into the sick computer, boot from the disc, once the windows 7 setup screen has come out, click next, and on the install now screen, click repair your computer on the bottom right corner, a window saying "Searching for windows installations..." may come up, just wait for it to do its thing. Once it's finished, select the first option "Use recovery tools that can help solve problems starting windows." Once you have selected it, a recovery menu should come up. Choose Command Prompt. Once the command prompt appears, type in notepad.exe, notepad should appear. Click on file at the top and choose open. Click on your hard drive, and you should see almost every file that's on the hdd! you can put them on a usb flash drive or external hard drive to back them up and put it once you reinstall your new copy of windows. But when you're copying them to the storage device, a percentage wont show. if its a big file and its frozen with a loading cursor, dont worry, the file is copying, its just that theres no percentage in the recovery menus, but the file is copying, and you will know that its finished copying once everything unfreezes. This is a neat little trick i found out when i had a computer that had a classpnp.sys bsod error on startup. Once you have finished backing everything up to your external hdd or usb drive, you can proceed with installing windows by grabbing another blank disc and burning an iso image of the operating system you want to install, or if you already have an original genuine copy of a windows disc, use that instead, just make sure you got a product key. to boot from the disc by the way, just press the key that shows the boot options like for example f8 (its different on some motherboards) once you have reinstalled windows, if your drivers are missing like the network adapter driver, see if a disc came with your laptop containing driver files and start that up and see if theres a driver installer corisponding to the specific driver you need.