How to reinstall Windows 10 onto a corrupted PC from an ISO image

idgat said:

I would say, probably, no.

A lot of users would reject the idea of a clean install and having to re-install all programs. But I would look at this way, without an accessible and workable image, this is no different from what would have happened if it had been a hardware (drive) failure ... something that any/every computer owner/user might have to be prepared to face at some stage.

Probably, the worst thing for me in reinstalling a fresh W10 is that my Lightroom catalog is on my C drive. That contains years of photo edits.

f14tomcat said:

On any working computer, like this one you are posting from, get a copy of Kyhi's Rescue Media and put it on a thumb drive. It contains a full working Windows PE environment and a multitude of apps for problem fixing. You can boot it and use it to copy your Lightroom data to another external drive to save it.

Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk

Wow! That sounds great. So, I should do that to save anything on the c drive before I do a fresh install and erase everything on the drive?

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idgat said:

This may be a stumbling block ....

I have the six 48 character bitlocker recovery keys if I need them.

Thanks!

f14tomcat said:

Once you have booted the Rescue Thumb drive, you can copy anything off to an external drive.

I may have missed a point, though. As @idgat pointed out, you said the drive is Bitlocker encrypted. I don't use Bitlocker, but if you have the PW for it, you should be ok. Someone else familiar with Bitlocker needs to verify this. But, yes, barring that you can get everything off before wiping it and starting over.

Thanks again. Yes, I have a password which unlocks all 6 drives but I found that working from the command prompt I needed to use these 48 numerical "recovery keys" to unlock each drive, which has its own key. Passwords only work from Windows.

dalchina said:

Unless you are able to decrypt them, I would say no on the basis of your system disk.

If you have a functional version of at least your Windows partition- whether in your image file or on your system disk, then you can.

When you created your disk image, did you use the option in MR to select all partitions comprising your Windows installation (typically 4 for UEFI e.g.) or did you just image C: ?

If you imaged all, you should be able to restore your system from that.

If you have a valid C: only then you can
- clean install Win 10
- check it boots
- restore the image of C: in place of the newly created C:
- either automatic repair will kick in, or use Startup Repair to get Windows to boot up.


This is a common misconception. Licensing is via digital entitlement on MS's activation servers and is related to your hardware ID.

You can freely reinstall Win 10 as many times as you like, and if you have a retail license, move that to a different PC.

I have to give what you say more thought. What I specifically didn't say is that my attempts to use bootrec /fixboot came back with "element not found" and following recommended diskpart commands didn't help me.

Are you saying if I do a new install on my C drive, I should be able to still access my Macrium backup images, in which I believe I backed up all the C partitions, and reinstall it?

Thanks!

dalchina said:

Unless you are able to decrypt them, I would say no on the basis of your system disk.

If you have a functional version of at least your Windows partition- whether in your image file or on your system disk, then you can.

When you created your disk image, did you use the option in MR to select all partitions comprising your Windows installation (typically 4 for UEFI e.g.) or did you just image C: ?

If you imaged all, you should be able to restore your system from that.

If you have a valid C: only then you can
- clean install Win 10
- check it boots
- restore the image of C: in place of the newly created C:
- either automatic repair will kick in, or use Startup Repair to get Windows to boot up.


This is a common misconception. Licensing is via digital entitlement on MS's activation servers and is related to your hardware ID.

You can freely reinstall Win 10 as many times as you like, and if you have a retail license, move that to a different PC.

f14tomcat said:

Sorry to jump into this post, but if you have MR images of the complete C drive, after a clean install you mount the MR Image and you can copy anything you want back to the C drive.

That's great. Will I be able to save a lot of time and reinstall my programs with it?

Absolutely, I'm still hoping that by using the Kyhli rescue stuff, I can still do a repair.

You've been great!