Windows won't boot or do a factory reset

Adam Partridge said:

I'm beginning to reach the end of the road with my laptop, and I'd rather get it working than get a new one, but I'm a tad bit of a noob, so please explain things clearly, thanks.

Upon my intense dissatisfaction with windows 10, I decided to switch to linux, and I therefore created another partition on my hard drive and installed linux on it. Things were fine for a while, I was using linux fulltime, and despite windows 10 still being on my laptop, I never booted into it. This remained the case for around 2-3 weeks, before I decided to switch back to Windows 10.

However, upon attempting to boot into windows 10, the bootscreen came up, but it just stayed there forever, without booting, so I held the power button to get out of it.

I therefore used a system recovery disk that I made a few months ago when windows 10 was still working to get into the recovery options (I can't access them from the OS itself because I can't get into the OS in the first place.)

I went into Troubleshoot and attempted a full system reset, which I hoped would also remove Linux and in general fix all of the problems. However, the reset failed, and I had no clue why it had done so, and so I attempted a startup repair. It searched for faults and before long was displaying the message "Repairing disk errors. This might take over an hour to complete." with the Toshiba logo above it (brand of my laptop). This made me suspect that there may be some kind of hard drive fault. It was running for a few hours before I stopped it by pressing the power button, because I really did not think it was doing anything.

I can't go back to a previous build of windows 10, because it's been a very long time since I did any major updates on there, and I can't do a system restore or system image recovery, because I have no system image from the past.

So, yeah, a tad bit of a pickle. Can anyone please provide assistance?

Hi Adam and welcome to Tenforums.
So, is your data backed up, and you're able to perform a clean install?
You can download the current W10 install media and wipe the hard drive and reinstall from scratch. Because W10 was on there before (and activated, I assume) you will not need to enter a key if asked, and it should activate once it's installed and online.

Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

I would choose the custom install, and delete all partitions, so you install to a completely unallocated drive.

If you think the drive needs CHKDSK run on it, you could boot to Kyhi's rescue media and run CHKDSK from there before doing the clean install.

Adam Partridge said:

Hi Simrick, thanks so much for the fast reply.

Originally Posted by simrick

So, is your data backed up, and you're able to perform a clean install?

Yeah, it is. This entire situation isn't really that bad, because I know that ultimately, all of my personal stuff is still safe, but I would of course like a functional laptop as well, it would be a bonus.

Okay, as long as the data is safe, we can fix this.

Adam Partridge said:

Originally Posted by simrick
I would choose the custom install, and delete all partitions, so you install to a completely unallocated drive

Does that mean that I can modify the hard drive's partitions during the installation process of windows 10?

Correct (well, you can delete them, or perform some very basic manipulation). Have a read of the tutorial for a clean installation; you'll see where it mentions custom install and unallocated:




You can delete all partitions on the drive completely, and Windows will create the ones it needs.

Adam Partridge said:

Originally Posted by simrick
If you think the drive needs CHKDSK run on it

Sorry, what's a CHKDSK? I'd like to know so I can determine whether or not it's necessary. If so, then I'l look into Kyhi's recovery software. Thanks

CHKDSK (CheckDisk) is the function is was doing for 2 hours when you stopped it because it seemed like it wasn't doing anything. Basically, it checks file structures, security descriptors, journals, etc. You probably don't need to do that if you're deleting all the partitions and starting from scratch. :) But it does check for and mark-off bad blocks, which would be good. But, I think your situation was not bad blocks, but more system file/structure problems.

The other option is, if you still have the Toshiba recovery partition, you could boot to that and restore the system to factory condition (usually F12 or something similar - it's different for the different OEMs). But then you would get all the OE bloatware back as well, and may need to install some major updates, (like the November update to v1511, and/or the Anniversary Update v1607 which came out last month). Personally, I'd grab the latest ISO from MS and clean install that way.

Adam Partridge said:

It all makes sense now. Thanks. My general assumption then is that doing a clean install of windows 10 won't fix bad blocks, but that's probably not an issue anyway.

Yes, I think in your case, CHKDSK is not needed.

Adam Partridge said:

Oh God, that sounds horrific. I got my laptop at the end of 2014, so it had windows 8.1, and so I'm assuming that it would go back to Windows 8, meaning that I'd need to upgrade to windows 10 with my product key and get rid of all the software and......... Yeah, soz, no. A clean install of windows 10 on a newly formatted hard drive is far better.

Thanks so much for the help, I'm gonna sleep soonish, so I'll leave the ISO downloading overnight and see to it tomorrow. Thanks again.

- Adam[/COLOR]

Oh no! We don't want W8 on there! Yes, clean install and nuke all the partitions. If you have any questions, please ask before you begin. Cheers!

Adam Partridge said:

Hi, I do have one question, because after skim-reading the clean install tutorial on this forum, I found something about carrying out a slightly different process during one part of the installation, dependant upon whether you are installing in with or without UEFI. Can you please explain what this means and give a recommendation? Cheers.

I got my laptop at the end of 2014, so it had windows 8.1

UEFI was available starting with W8, so your system probably has UEFI and Secure Boot. I would use RUFUS to create the flash drive from the W10 ISO, and create it for UEFI scheme. (See option #2 here)

Secure Boot might need to be disabled in the BIOS, in order to get the machine to boot from the USB flash drive. However, I have read on one thread that it doesn't, so I would try booting to the USB drive first to see if it's working, and if not, start changing settings in the BIOS. But, the fact that you had Linux on here tells me that you had no problems booting to install that, so maybe I'm not addressing the right thing?

Maybe this will help?
What You Need to Know About Using UEFI Instead of the BIOS

What is the difference in - Super User

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