W10 issues - upgrade or automatic repair loop?

Caledon Ken said:

Sorry.

Are you using two disks, say an SSD and HDD or just HDD. The easiest way to tell would be to open case and look.


Ken

Oh it's just one HDD. No SSD or anything :)

Caledon Ken said:

Great.

So what is your next step?

Well, my own pc is surprising me at every turn.

Yesterday I hooked up my external dvd drive (Apple Superdrive) and yesterday the BIOS recognized my first two HDDs and then the external drive which it denoted with either UEFI or normal (can't remember the exact name it was given..)

However.. today it seems to simply call it 'Apple Superdrive' in the boot menu and it doesn't do anything at all when I select it. I no longer have a single clue about what's going on with this system.

Caledon Ken said:

It recognized two HDD's. I thought you had one.

Do you have access to another computer and something to mount your current HDD into, either the case or an external enclosure?

Sadly no.

I actually resolved today to just do a clean install and be done with it. I got an USB and used Rufus to get it to fuction as the bootable media. Thing is, again it's recognized as either flash disk or UEFI: flash disk. The normal one sends me straight into W10 repair (ergo, it does nothing) and the UEFI one sends me to the purple screen (W10 install) but nothing actually pops up.

I am completely stumped 😅😔

Caledon Ken said:

Ouch.

Please follow this tutorial on doing a clean install. Please note BIOS settings, listed as warnings with pink background, they may even be holding up your current install. I imagine your MB boots UEFI so Rufus has to be FAT32.

It is just so much simplier to use the USB key that Microsoft generates when created on Windows 10 machine. (4GB). Buy a buddy a beer and create a key at their house. Depending on download speed, maybe two beers.

Can you boot to command prompt with current system?


Ken

Do you mean the tutorial that you posted on the first page? It is what I used to setup the USB the first time around. I used Rufus because for some reason the Windows media tool would not recognize my USB, as such I downloaded the ISO and used Rufus to get it on the USB.

I will give it another shot.

I am not sure if I am booting into command prompt. But I can get into automatic repair and one of the advanced options there is command prompt. So technically I guess, yes?

Thanks a lot so far!

I don't get it anymore.

I have tried a Windows 10 USB with various configurations (GPT, MBR whatever. All the options) and none of them seem to get past the purple screen after selecting the USB for booting. (Fast and Secure Boot are both disabled).

I let it boot from my harddrive (the WD one that used to have my OS) and I get to the command prompt option. I enter 'diskpart' and then 'list disk' and then it comes up with 'there are no fixed disks to show'.

What the living F.. has this Windows 10 upgrade done to my PC?