Get black screen with the revolving dots icon, It has run this way for over an hour. Recovery disk fails to yield any benefit. Computer showed "automatic repair" mode but no results. May have been scammed. Had a guy tell me he had to "cut off your computer" because I would not subscribe to his repair package.
In your case it may be that the "guy" did something that encrypted the drive because you didn't give him money, it's called Ransomware. I'd say a clean install is in order but I usually boot to a Linux LiveDVD first to see if anything can be recovered from the drive.
Thanks for the suggestion Berton.
I just finished resetting to an earlier date, to no avail, which means I can get into the "F12" menu. I can see what other options there may be there. Is there anything unique about a "clean install"? How can that be done since I can not restart the computer?
A clean install is accomplished by booting to a DVD or a USB created for the purpose by the MCT/Media Creation Tool and will wipe out everything on the drive. If there's problems where Windows won't load such as the Win7 I did yesterday I will first wipe out all the partitions to give the drive a 'new' status then boot the Windows media to install. In the most severe cases I have removed the drive and put it in a drive dock in a different computer and do the first part. I have a Linux Mint Desktop I can do the same with, has GPARTED installed on it and gives me the ability to save any possible data before wiping the partitions.
Have a look at
Download Windows 10 ISO File Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials
Clean Install Windows 10 Windows 10 Installation Upgrade Tutorials
When you have your PC up and running again, you may want to consider- as soon as Windows is running and before you install anything else- how you protect yourself from this sort of scenario, and avoid losing time and perhaps data, and give yourself the chance of recovering without needing technical help, perhaps within an hour or so.
We constantly and repeatedly urge people to use disk imaging routinely. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) (other programs exist) + its boot medium + external storage for image sets.
You can image the set of partitions for Windows and any other combination of disks and partitions. An image is a compressed copy. Image sets are made up of a base image- the first- and smaller differential images- the difference between the base image and the imaged partitions/disks when the image is created.
Restoring an image can be done to a new disk, or to the existing disk.
Images also act as backups from which files and folders can be extracted.
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