Windows 10 not loading

My Lenovo Ideapad 310 won't load windows.

Over the last 2 or 3 days I did the following actions in bite size chunks ,

I transferred family photos etc I wanted to keep onto a spare drive.
I then went through a total restore deleting everything to get a fresh start.
I installed Brave Browser and Presearch search engine.
I ran windows update and updated the default McAfee antivirus which came with it.
I went into add/remove programs and removed a lot of stuff and turned off stuff from startup.
I can't remember what I did in there. I remember looking for stuff that really annoyed me such as Lenovo photo manager etc which were always popping up. I assumed they wouldn't let me remove anything essential without some sort of caution or that essential stiff would start if needed and called by something else ?
The last thing I did before I rebooted was install OpenOffice after uninstalling the free trial of Windows Office.

I rebooted and get to a screen asking

"Choose your keyboard layout"

I made a choice and then I got 2 options:

A) Troubleshoot or B) Turn off your PC

Choosing A) troubleshoot led me to a screen with six options.

Those 6 options are

1)Startup Repair

"Start-up Repair couldn't repair your PC"


2)Command Prompt

Msconfig isnt recognised as a command . I can't seem to get anywhere from Googling potentially useful commands.

3) Uninstall Updates

"We ran into a problem and won't be able to uninstall..."

4) UEFI Firmware settings

5) System Restore

"To use system restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore.
Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select System Restore"

There's no option to select the operating system that I can see ?


6) System Image Recovery

Unfortunately the reinstall was too fresh for me to even get around to saving a backup point or system image.


I had lent my laptop to my partner for a few months when she needed it for college and basically I had intended to simply clear it out to make it serve only my purposes again after I obtained enough external storage to transfer anything important. It was working fine before I finally got around to this.

What can I do ?

dalchina said:

Hi, given you said

- although that doesn't tell me which kind of refresh or reset you may have done... but you have backed up whatever data you wanted..

then since you haven't so much invested in configuring it, the best and simplest thing to do is to clean install Win 10- especially after someone else has been using it.

Clean Install Windows 10

Activation should be automatic.

Note the windows build will be 21H1. I don't know what was on there previously.

Yes the bright side of this is I haven't lost any important files or photos .

Thanks for the link to instructions for a clean install. I'd have to download a fresh copy from Microsoft ? It's fortunate I have the storage to download it.
There is supposed to be an OEM partition on the laptop for Windows 10 to be installed from . I am wondering if this is somehow corrupted. Or if there's a way to get that menu where it's offered to me. I just can't see it anywhere.

If an OEM licence is involved,it would be advisable to contact Lenovo and see if the original system can be restored,before attempting any further actions.
The key is their property and is locked to that device and if you have inadvertently corrupted that,then you will have problems.

The machine is OEM licensed and will not boot.Therefore any download is via a non-OEM machine and won't work simply because a Retail licensed machine is not permitted to download OEM,or any other.
Which is why contacting Lenovo is necessary.
The age of the build and included software are irrelevant and easily attended to.
There are at least four types of non-interchangeable licences,---Retail---OEM---Institutional ---Educational.
If they were freely available to all and sundry,Microsoft would have gone broke long ago.
Removing the constraints of OEM is by buying your own licence,putting yourself in control.

Because I had a temporary dose of "Tunnel Vision" and kept thinking,for some inexplicable reason,that the downloading machine was the final destination also and thus the motherboard I.D. would not line up.
Sometimes politely referred to as a "senior's moment".
Apologies.