Can't reinstall Windows 10 Pro 64bit

I originally upgraded to Win 10 over Win 8.1 when it first came out. Recently it started to slow up and I decided to reinstall from a DVD which I'd burnt as ISO disc from Win10 software from Microsoft download site. I had also saved the product code for reinstalling.

However, when I tried to boot from the installation disc, despite the BIOS being set to boot first from optical drive, it would not detect the ISO DVD on boot up. I worked around this by disconnecting all HDs, and once Win10 began installing on the RAM, I hot connected the HD which is an SSD Corsair.

It loaded start-up OK, and I installed the product key. But when it got to the point where it showed the HD on which to install the OS, a message came up saying the hard drive was locked and it could not install on it.

So I reloaded Win 8.1 Pro and then tried to install Win10 from the installation DVD in the optical drive on the active OS. It got to about 70% and failed. After trying repair option, it failed again and auto and reverted back to Win 8.1.

So I'm stuck on 8.1 despite having used W10 ever since it was released. Any suggestions?

Strange.

I wonder what use you might have made of the product key. You don't get a real one with the upgrade.

All that I can think of regarding the DVD is that it is corrupt. When you tried re-installing 8.1 and upgrading that, you didn't need the DVD. 8.1 is capable of mounting the .iso as a virtual drive and upgrading from that.

How old is the DVD? If it as made before November, you need to download Windows 10 again and create a new DVD or USB because a new build of Windows 10 was released in November (or mount the new ISO for an upgrade install).

NavyLCDR said:

How old is the DVD? If it as made before November, you need to download Windows 10 again and create a new DVD or USB because a new build of Windows 10 was released in November (or mount the new ISO for an upgrade install).

I used the Media Creation Tool just a couple of days ago and got 10586.0, my current installs are at .36 after getting updates.

Update: Apologies to everyone, and thanks to all for the input. I finally found the answer to the problem. After swapping out RAM and DVD burner, as a last resort I ran the PC on my backroom setup, with only the monitor, mouse and keyboard plugged in, and it ran all installation DVDs flawlessly.

Prior to this I had found a work around to the boot issue. On booting the installation DVD, I could see the green light flashing on the burner, showing it was working. But no message came up saying: "Press any key to boot from disk." So I tried pressing any key anyhow, and it booted the installation to the RAM!

However, when I ran the PC hooked up back on my main setup, once again it would not show the press any key message. I realized I had been running it in the backroom with no extraneous plugins. So I unplugged the printer, webcam, eSATA, etc. But still to no avail.

Finally the penny dropped and I realized I had not unplugged a recently added HDMI cable from my PC to my TV. And that was the culprit. It was an expensive cable with built in amplifier to maintain the signal quality.

So now everything is working flawlessly again. And Win 10 is up and running. Cheers Mustang

Hi Mike, agree it would be good to have "Any Key" on keyboard. I usually hit Enter and that works quite well.

Cheers Mustang

CountMike said:

Sometimes, something changes on the screen while any key is pressed and Enter activates that instead, had few cases like that and something unexpected happened.

I've also had that happen a few times.