My dell laptop decided to update windows 10. It was stuck at 90% for 36 hours. I decided to turn it off and back on despite the warning not to. Now it's dead. My Macrium backup tells me there is no local hard drive. I can't figure out how to do a complete factory restore with the Dell recovery partition if it even exists at this point. Any ideas on what to do next?
You need to determine if your drive is functional and accessible.
Can you see it referenced if you boot to your BIOS?
If not, try physically moving it and ensuring it's connected ok.
Other options:
- Remove it, put it in a caddy, connect it as a USB disk to a working PC and see if it is then accessible.
- Create a live boot disk (Kyhi's, Bob Omb's, Linux if you prefer- Google...) on another PC and boot your PC from that. Use the utilities on the boot disk to see if your internal disk is accessible.
Great that you have a disk image. Do you have Macrium's bootable disk?
I am fond of giving a man a fish.
Windows PE: Bob.Ombs.Modified.Win10PEx64.v4.6.7z - Google Drive
Linux Mint: http://muug.ca/mirror/linuxmint/iso/...n-64bit-v2.iso
Plan to make a custom install:
Custom Install Windows 10
This should save files to windows old and installs a fresh operating system.
Drivers and applications need to be reinstalled.
These are some options:
1) Test the hardware with the Dell diagnostics:
http://www.dell.com/support/article/...codes-?lang=en
https://www.dell.com/support/article...ows-10?lang=en
2) On a working computer create a bootable Windows 10 iso:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
Download Windows 10 ISO File
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10
3) Perform a custom install:
Custom Install Windows 10
You can boot to F12 one time boot menu and see if your hard drive/SSD is still listed as a bootable device. Also you can boot your MR recovery thumb drive boot the UEFI USB MR this could be why you didn't see your drive as a device if you booted it as Only USB. UEFI systems need the boot to be UEFI USB MR
from the same window run the diagnostic tools to ensure your Hard drive/SSD is not defective.
Thanks to all for trying to help. Most of the above went right over my head. On my own I created a windows bootable usb drive. A screen came up and I chose "repair the computer." It ran for a long time and then gave me a black screen which says "boot configuration data file doesn't contain valid information for an operating system. It wants me to insert my installation disk. I haven't seen one of those since windows 98. So I guess I'm just out of luck.
Plenty of good advice above- suggest you try to get help from a friend a bit more familiar with this if you've been lucky enough never to have to deal with a hardware problem before - which this may be.
All builds of Win 10 are freely downloadable. The Tutorial section here is a great help:
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10
- also offers some basic repair tools.
That lets you create a flash drive (or a DVD if you prefer) which you can connect to your PC, then configure the BIOS to boot from it or hit the appropriate key for your machine when booting: you then have two basic options:
a. Install Windows (whcih you can do as many times as you want- no license needed now your PC is activated)
b. click 'Repair your computer' on the screen early on- after the language selection screen I think- and that gives you some basic options like command prompt, startup repair, system restore etc.
However, unless you are very lucky, you have a more basic problem- the disk inside your PC seems not to be accessible. Perhaps it needs replacing. To decide, you can do some tests, or simply decide to buy a new one and clean install Win 10.
If you have no backup and haven't yet discovered how routinely using disk imaging using a free program would let you get back to where you were in a couple of hours, say, and give you a full backup - avoiding a clean install and loss of data- that may be your only option.
This is another link for custom install:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-13b5f2cf7e44
Note: for the custom install you don't click on repair your computer
Please see the Ten Forums tutorial too.
Run the Dell diagnostics > take a picture of the tests ran with results > post images into the thread
I do use Macrium Reflect to image my hard drives. And made the Macrium bootable USB. It boots, and finds the image on my external hard drive with no problem. But it seems it cannot find the hard drive to restore to. I did create a microsoft bootable usb drive. I did click repair my computer. That is when I got the message that I need to insert my installation disk. Booting from the USB now goes directly to that message. It won't allow me to do anything else.
My hard drive shows up in the bios. The Dell trouble shooting shows nothing wrong. I would be very happy to install windows but I don't have a copy of windows to install from. I will try to download windows per the microsoft link, zbook. If it doesn't work I will retire that machine. It's old and came with windows 7 which I should never had allowed to upgrade to 10.
Maybe I can ask one more question. What do I do in the future if this happens on one of my other computers? It's obvious I can't turn it off to reboot. What do I do if the installation hangs like this one did? I have one which updated fine, but took 3 or 4 hours. And I have two more to go.
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