Cant do a fresh install - system corrupted

Hi All,

I really messed up my laptop and am hoping someone has some helpful tips. First some history of how I got here.

This laptop has been dreadfully slow ever since i upgraded to the Windows 10 update last year. Boot up could take 10 minutes and clicking on anything would take 1 to 3 minutes to do a step. We had pretty much stopped using this laptop but recently had a desire to see if I can get this working better. I tried some basic performance tuning steps but they had no impact on performance. So - yesterday I opted to do a refresh of the machine and kicked that off.

The refresh went very well. At the end I noticed the hard drive was still using almost 600 gig out of 1TB. Poking around I found a few things to delete that were no big deal but the largest I found was a folder called "windows.old" that had 100 gig of stuff in it. This appeared to be where the refresh stuck old files in case I needed them I guess. To test out if I could delete this folder I renamed the folder to "windows.deleteme" and then I rebooted. System started up fine with no problem. So, I proceeded to delete this large folder.

During the delete I got several messages about lacking permissions to delete this folder. I spent a while trying to change the permissions on this folder and my permissions and was able to delete most of the stuff in there, except about 5 gig. But everything left in there just wouldnt delete no matter what I did. I searched around the web based on the error I got and found this page:
Permission error - Failed to enumerate objects in the container. - Microsoft Community

I followed the steps on that page and it all appeared to go well. Then I rebooted with the intent to delete the folder after it started up. Now, when I reboot it loads into windows just fine - but nothing works. The start button, task bar, app icons, nothing responds. App icons no longer have text. If I use a short cut to open some things a window will open, but nothing will be in it with no menus or apps. Multiple reboots just brings the same results.

I was not able to travel to the systems option to to a refresh of the system at all. I tried booting into Safe Mode in various ways but nothing allowed me to do anything functional. I created a Windows Media DVD and tried to do a refresh this way but on the total fresh install path it would not proceed because I dont have an install key (laptop came with the OS and I dont have disks). There was a repair option on the boot from DVD too but that failed too.

The only thing I can think of would be to try and kick off the refresh from within Windows, but I cant figure out how to make anything respond to get to it. Right now I appear to have a brick. All paths and solutions that I find say "click on start menu...." which is a fail for me right away.

Hopefully I was able to explain well enough my predicament and someone will be able to help me. I suspect this may not be fixable without buying a new windows copy, which I'm not going to do on an older system.

Thanks dalchina. Yes, I was not aware of the ability to freely download Windows. But not sure how that applies when I was asked for a install code and it threw an error after I didnt have it.

In any case - I am unsure how to proceed with your recommended steps. As mentioned earlier, when I start windows nothing at all runs. The task bar, start menu, search option, apps - nothing responds. So from there I am not able to run a cmd window to run the disk check.

I am able to open the app File Explorer - but there are no menu's, no files, nothing showing. There are some folder icons there with no identifying text and opening those folders just shows more of the same blankness. I can also open the Task Manager with ctrl-alt-del, but again, just a window with menu or listings.

I tried rebooting into Safe Mode with a command prompt - all that showed up was a blank black screen - not command prompt and no response to typing.

Plugging in a thumb drive with the Crystal DiskInfo app does not give me a prompt to open the file or anything that would allow me to browse to the folder and open that program.

Sorry. I'm not usually this lame on a pc. I've worked with them for 30 years and brought many back from the dead, reinstalled many OSs and done a lot of stuff my friends have thought magical. I have never bricked any device before but I fear that I may have my first brick here. I'm just at a loss on proceeding with this one.

Nothing else to try? Should I just trash the laptop?

Thanks - I'll try that tonight when I get home (about 12 hours from now)