You had a good idea there, but with UEFI you can't boot from external media by default, at least not on that system or others I've encountered. Plus, the media I have with Macrium won't boot in UEFI...

I reassembled the computer and it booted normally exactly like the first time. There is NO OPTION to power off the machine EXCEPT the power switch. Pressing the power switch once results in a...

Alright, some real useful ideas here! Now we're talking! The drawback however is that I must reassemble the machine to try these ideas. I really want to have a way to restore the factory state of the...

B/C I have not found a nice, reliable and convenient backup program to use on Linux, surprisingly enough. Macrium is great, so is Acronis but I don't have a license for it.

I could use dd in...

Obviously the drive is NOT toast, look at the chkdsk results.

I totally agree, but you miss the point of why I want to avoid Win10. It has nothing to do with a lack of power / shutdown before completing initialization. It has everything to do with a very long...

Duh, "making a copy" is precisely what I'm trying to do! Reading the info you linked, mostly the discussion is dealing with problems trying to use chkdsk on the active system drive. That isn't the...

OK then, so I did the most logical thing, since the system was not yet initialized there would be no start menu available.

Does anyone here wonder why I want to avoid Windows 10? It should be...

Well, not being intimately familiar with Win10, and given the OS was not fully initialized anyway, I saw no obvious way to shut it down other than the power switch, tho in retrospect I never even...

Yes, absolutely right! Thx for pointing this out what should have been obvious - must be time for bed :sleepy:

However, I don't understand why a brand new factory image would have a corrupted file...

I am preparing a brand new HP 15-f272wm laptop bought today from Walmart (Windows 10) and before I install another OS I thought I would make a backup image of the entire hard drive using Macrium...