WIN10. Failed recovery stick. Failed reinstallation stick. DVD worked.

paleolith · 05 Feb 2024

Windows 10 failed and would not boot. Booted USB recovery drive. About halfway through recovery process it failed--message was something like "could not reset your PC." I had to reinstall WIN 10 using DVD with downloaded (from an another PC of course) install file from Microsoft using media creation tool. First attempt at reinstall used a USB stick with downloaded install file--but it kept recycling to first screen to reinstall--it could not complete. Out of desperation I downloaded the install file (on another PC of course) and created a bootable DVD. The DVD worked. What a relief! I am glad I have an optical drive.

Questions: How to create a recovery stick that will work in a non booting crisis.
How to reinstall Win 10 with a stick containing installation file (my stick kept recycling to the first screen try after try
after try).

Thank you for helping me. (My stress level was intense during the above process).

dalchina · 05 Feb 2024

Hi, it's not clear to me that your attempt to create a bootable flash drive was correct.

If you simply copied the iso file to the flash drive- that makes it a data drive effectively, not a bootable drive.

From the searchable Tutorials section - do have a look- right on the front page- you can find this:

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10

Use the MS media creation tool to create the bootable drive directly.

Related: you than have to know how to get your particular PC to boot from that. That varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, depending on the BIOS/UEFI firmware.

You can readily find that info using using a search engine- this tutorial is in the list below the main text of the above tutorial:
How to Boot from a USB Drive in Windows 10

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Noting your problem:
Windows 10 failed and would not boot.
a. Have you actually checked your disk(s)? That's the first thing I'd do.
Crystal Diskinfo or (better) Hard Disk Sentinel (includes SSDs).

b. How do you give yourself a way to restore your O/S (and any partition) to a previous good working state, saving yourself a clean install?

As is endlessly recommended by members here: routinely and regularly use 3rd party disk imaging.
E.g. Macrium Reflect, Aomei Backupper - free versions are good enough for most- and large enough external secure storage for image files.

If you'd been doing that... esp. with Macrium R - early disk failure can be detected in the course of updating a set of image files, and you could simply have restored your O/S etc to as it was when you created the image, potentially saving a lot of time and stress. (These come with bootable disks you can create from the program of course).

paleolith · 06 Feb 2024

Disk OK. Used media creation tool to create bootable drive. Used boot menu to boot to USB stick. Clean install would not finish. Kept recycling to first install screen over and over. Tried recovery disk previously created--failed midway through recovery. I searched net and others had continuous recycling problem. Two pulled out USB stick when install restarted--this allowed clean install to complete. I will do image backups using free EASEUS backup. I am scared to try clean install using media creation tool stick. Recovery drive creation was worthless. Thanks for your help.

spunk · 06 Feb 2024

When installing Windows from a USB Flash drive, after going through the first stage of the install process, the computer does it's first Reboot. At this stage, remove the USB Flash drive before the computer fully restarts, and the computer will boot from the HDD/SSD and continue the Install Process. If not, the computer will boot to the Flash drive and would start the install process again from the beginning.