Fresh install needed but no OEM disc

Edith Massey · 30 May 2020

Mostly successful. I tried to get the ISO from the heidoc link, but after two supposed downloads and never being able to find anything to click on, I gave up and went with the media creation tool route.

Long story short, 1909 is now the PS, although the return I get from winver is odd.

The problems from my old installation didn't come over to the new one, however the new one doesn't want to see my usb HDD (but the Win 7 machine in the office sees it)

I'm calling this a win, assuming nothing else pops up.

Thank you all for your valuable insight, and it was delivered in a friendly way with no snark. I'm impressed. I'll be sticking around this forum.

Ztruker · 30 May 2020

You have 2004 which is the latest available, not 1909. This is a good thing I believe.

If the Win 7 machine sees it, the Win 10 machine should see it. Do they both have USB 2.0 ports or is one USB 3.0?

Edith Massey · 30 May 2020

Ztruker said:

You have 2004 which is the latest available, not 1909. This is a good thing I believe.

That's strange, as the ISO is they dropped on me is named 1909. But I agree, not necessarily a bad thing.

Ztruker said:

If the Win 7 machine sees it, the Win 10 machine should see it. Do they both have USB 2.0 ports or is one USB 3.0?

The Office Dell with W7 is 2.0. My den Dell is a combo of 2 and 3. I went through something similar back in early March when Windows wouldn't let me mount an external DVD drive via any USB port. I get the same message in both instances: " The installation of this device is forbidden by system policy. Contact your system administrator. (that's me) To find a driver for this device, click Update Driver." Then I'd enter loop mode with everything repeating.

So I put on my problem solving hat and stuck at it until I eventually made it go away by modifying a single registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\DeviceInstall\Restrictions\DenyUnspecified. I deleted the DWORD value at the end of the string. That's the first place I looked for today's problem, but no luck there.

Turns out that key was dropped there by the evaluation copy of Sophos AV that I'd uninstalled a couple of weeks earlier after not being all that impressed with its performance vs. huge appetite for resources. They don't do a very good job of cleaning up before they leave.

idgat · 30 May 2020

Edith Massey said:

That's strange, as the ISO is they dropped on me is named 1909. But I agree, not necessarily a bad thing.

Suspect that's because of an "instant" update to 2004 after 1909 was installed. Did you have the internet connected during the install process?

... Sophos AV that I'd uninstalled a couple of weeks earlier after not being all that impressed with its performance vs. huge appetite for resources. They don't do a very good job of cleaning up before they leave.

Multiple websites, multiple forums ... all full of the same experience (and not just Sophos).

dalchina · 31 May 2020

Glad to hear you succeeded with a clean install.

Now before you start configuring and installing, start using disk imaging routinely as is so often recommended here. Thus you have a second chance and can restore to a previous good state, and have a full backup of all disks/partitions imaged.
E.g. Macrium Reflect (free- paid) + large enough external storage.

I used Heidoc's downloader yesterday, successfully.
You have to wait for it to populate the screen at one point, then select what you want, then you should see this, and you choose where the iso file is saved.

Fresh install needed but no OEM disc-1.png

But then you need to create a bootable disk for a clean install.

Ztruker · 31 May 2020

1903? He is already on 2004, or was that just an example?

dalchina · 01 Jun 2020

The original discussion post #1,#2 was about a 1903 in-place upgrade repair.
One wouldn't bother to use the Heidoc iso downloader for the current build of Windows.
I was therefore addressing the poster's problem in using the downloader for an OLD windows build, simply in response to the problem experienced by way of a follow-up comment.

Further, it's possible an iso was downloaded, and is now taking up unnecessary space, which you might wish to delete @Edith Massey

Hope that's clear.

Ztruker · 02 Jun 2020

Got it, thanks for the clarification.