should I get windows 10 - bill gates is actually satan

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

well, since I have a topic for it I might as well update:


I left for a week and got back to find my computer would not boot past the circling dots under the blue windows logo screen

Manual reboots bring up start up recovery, which does effectively nothing as it seems to either

• sit at the diagnosing phase indefinitely or
• give me that goddam ":(" screen and reboot itself because it thinks it might have solved the problem or something, but once again sits at the loading screen forever

So what I figured I need to do is just get into safe mode and do a system restore. Problem is, you can't boot into safe mode if you can't boot at all in windows 10, f8 on start up doesn't do anything anymore.

So that's terrific, so I guess I'll take the other option of booting with a windows 10 disc I'll make from the download website to get at advanced start up. But- fukken thing won't boot either.

So I'm gonna have to see if I burned the disc wrong or something because I don't have any other options from the looks of it



tl;dr version - GOD DAMN IT

 

[Nabber]

Re: should I get windows 10

can't you boot into UEFI? you can probably get into safe mode from there

 

[freakworld]

Re: should I get windows 10

well, since I have a topic for it I might as well update:


I left for a week and got back to find my computer would not boot past the circling dots under the blue windows logo screen

Manual reboots bring up start up recovery, which does effectively nothing as it seems to either

• sit at the diagnosing phase indefinitely or
• give me that goddam ":(" screen and reboot itself because it thinks it might have solved the problem or something, but once again sits at the loading screen forever

So what I figured I need to do is just get into safe mode and do a system restore. Problem is, you can't boot into safe mode if you can't boot at all in windows 10, f8 on start up doesn't do anything anymore.

So that's terrific, so I guess I'll take the other option of booting with a windows 10 disc I'll make from the download website to get at advanced start up. But- fukken thing won't boot either.

So I'm gonna have to see if I burned the disc wrong or something because I don't have any other options from the looks of it



tl;dr version - GOD DAMN IT

can you go into your bios at all?

Also I prefer the install media usb boot stick instead of the dvd so maybe try that

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

can't you boot into UEFI? you can probably get into safe mode from there

Don't think I have that, all I have is a BIOS menu. My computer is from 2010ish so I don't know if UEFI was hugely around then

can you go into your bios at all?

Also I prefer the install media usb boot stick instead of the dvd so maybe try that

Yeah I can, but there's nothing of use to me there except playing with boot order to try and force it to use the dvd.

Probably will try a usb though, I just didn't want to horse around with all the files I have stored on them. They've all got a bunch of stuff I was going to dump off on the computer

 

[freakworld]

Re: should I get windows 10

basically what you want to do is have a completely empty usb stick, then create a windows 10 install media on it

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

using the tool from that (you need to do this on another pc), then change the boot order in your bios to boot from that usb stick.

and that should work. if it doesnt i dont know what would, except for sending the entire thing in for repairs.

Source: i did that once to wipe my hard drive and clean install windows 10. you shouldnt need a product key because it should automatically detect that you have an activated copy of windows 10 but if you have one write it down i guess

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

That's what I've been doing, but I was put off by it when it only gave me the options to repair or clean install when I booted from it. I looked online at other people using the recovery tool, and it seems to give them the option of installing or repairing quickly, so I think they've changed the tool lately.

I'm pretty sure this is either a disk error or some bad upgrade that installed while I was away, so I don't really want to wipe my disk until I'm sure I have to.

Turns out, there's a completely different recovery drive tool you can use, so I'm gonna make one of those using this laptop and see if that gives me advanced start up.

I tried booting it up yesterday and it did something different- said it was repairing disk errors and could take over an hour. I went to bed and it was still doing it 10 hours later, so I figured it was stuck on the screen as usual. I ended up just shutting it down, so it might be too late already.

 

[freakworld]

Re: should I get windows 10

yeah i would definitely attempt that disk wipe if theres no way of accessing your files anymore.

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

I did finally create a recovery drive, which turned out to be an entirely different thing from the upgrade/install tool Microsoft had linked, using this laptop which is giving me access to some stuff.

There's a start up repair option in it, which I tried and it actually finished and told me things, but didn't seem to help.

I've apparently got no system restore points to try and use, which is weird. I figured I had that going when it was Windows 7, and that it would keep making them after the switch, but maybe not. That or it just can't access them or something.

There's a command prompt where I'm currently trying CHKDSK /r

If that doesn't work, there's an option that says it lets me reinstall Windows while giving me the option of keeping my files. I'm gonna double check my backup drive before I try that though.



I'm gonna keep piling on here as a full log of what I've been doing these past days because what the hell, it could come in handy. Troubleshooting inbetween my job is also literally the only thing I've done since I first got this problem, so might as well make it worth something.

CHKDSK did nothing from the looks of it, and operated for maybe two seconds before finishing.

Reinstalling windows did nothing, just giving a bluescreen with a DPC Watchdog Violation message and never letting me move forward

I discovered some tools my computer manufacturer left on the machine that I'd never seen until now, reported my HDD failed a SMART test

Checked the HDD in command prompt and it said it passed the SMART test

Decided to try getting into safe mode again, first by command prompt, which didn't work as it sat on the loading screen indefinitely as usual. And I may have to go back there and turn it back to booting normally later.

Did some research and found out lo and behold, I should have been asked to get into advanced start up mode like 20 times by now. Automatic startup repair was supposed to go into Diagnose mode and then give me advanced start up, but it doesn't. Yet another blue screen message each time this happens, Driver Irql Not Less Or Equal. Automatic startup repair then usefully reboots the computer back into endless loading screen.

Both BSOD messages can refer to bad drivers or bad hardware. Some people said deleting a specific driver via command fixed their Irql message and let them use their computer again, so I'm currently waiting for that screen to come up again and see if it gives me a problem driver. Problem is, Diagnose mode takes 80 years to complete and I either never paid attention to it or kept cutting it short because I assumed it was going to sit there and load forever like the regular boot.

Also trying commands to supposedly repair MBR, Boot and rebuild BCD in the meantime

I'm probably running a fool's errand but I really feel like I could get back into Windows if I just do something I haven't tried yet

 

[freakworld]

Re: should I get windows 10

I got the Driver IRQL not less or equal bluescreen a few times before and that was indeed a defective driver which I've since deleted, it should tell you which .sys file it is thats causing problems when you get that bluescreen so you can try deleting that (from system32 i believe it was)

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

My thoughts exactly, however I just found out it doesn't name any driver to me when I get that BSOD.

I guess I can try getting that message to come up a few times to see if anything changes, but I might be out of leads. I'm not sure what else I can do now.

 

[freakworld]

Re: should I get windows 10

Did you try that complete disk wipe + reinstall yet?

That really should only be your last resort though, else I'm not really sure what to do either anymore.

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

That is my last resort, because I will lose some stuff if I do that.

I tried checking and cleaning connections on the inside and realised I have no thermal paste to stick my heatsink back, so I can't do anything else today until after work.

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

Finally got the paste, and the stuff's gone bad

Instead of thick white stuff, its clear fluid that spilled all over

This is going to kill me



Got good paste, smeared it on in a lovely X pattern and crushed it with my heatsink

No fires have resulted from the CPU or the crap I spilled last night

Cool

Back to work, I horsed around with CHKDSK some more

Tried scanning C, and it reported there was only like 100 MB on that drive. That's probably really bad I thought.

But then I looked at my other drives.

C is extremely tiny because that's not where anything is. Windows and all my of (from the looks of it) intact files are actually on E.

I'm dead sure everything was on C. I have no goddam clue how this happened, or if it's what's wrong. Using CHKDSK on E now and it's taking a suitably long time.

Am I getting dementia? Is my computer? Is this some crazy shit with transposed letters over multiple universes like the Berenstain Bears?



So I'm pretty sure I know that's what's wrong now. The USB drives all seem to have weird lettering now too.

I poked around, trying to see if there's a way to change the drive Windows is on. Sort of, it's not easy. I did try it, it involved bugging around with some boot files, during which I renamed a critical file. I could only assume that the next step I had to do in the process was going to recreate it, but it just hung there so I cancelled it. Windows can't boot anymore, but I'm pretty sure if I just renamed that file back I'd be where I was. But, trying to boot into Windows hasn't worked for a week anyway, so I just left it as is.

I found my external drive had system images from May 2 this entire time. I guess I should've remembered that when the first backup I did ended up filling half of the drive.

So I used Command Prompt and manually picked out all the files I modified after that onto a USB stick.

I wanted to be absolutely sure of what I was doing, so I spent hours reading into how you can look into a system image file and see what's in it. Turns out, you don't need to mount it from the partition manager tool like you did in Windows 7. I kept trying that though. I had to restart twice so it'd stop complaining my admin account didn't have permissions. And then once you successfully do that, there's no files inside. Back to researching.

In Windows 10, all you have to do to get a system image open is double click it. Which basically mounts it anyway, but NOW the files aren't invisible. But all was not good yet, as the folders I needed to get at would load extremely slowly, and just as they were about to finish, stop loading entirely.

Nothing online helped me with that, so I had to find out myself it was some weird permissions issue.

But I did finally see everything on the image, it's all there and it's all good. I compared folders to folder DIR readouts from my computer. I can make it out of this without any loss if I do this right. My HDD could be perfectly fine too, though it is six years old and that's probably not entirely true.

I'd like to just copy the entire system image to the laptop so I have it on more than one location, but the hard drive on this is literally too small for it.

Back to advanced start up, so I can load the system image and recover. Nope, external drive has a built in password system. Gotta figure out how to turn that off so Windows can find the image on it.

Windows finds the image and it gets ready to install. Nope, recovery environment is somehow not the same OS as what's on the computer. The computer and the laptop I made the recovery environment with are using the same versions of Windows 10, so I can only assume it's because different computers made the recovery and images. Which is stupid because I can't use the computer that made the images to do anything else besides command line functions at this point.

I also tried using the network options to get the image installing, but those don't really work over a Homegroup which the computer is no longer a part of. The driver option didn't help either because it just complained at me as soon as I tried picking the first one. I also had the idea to copy the image back onto the computer using command line, but the disk here would also not be able to hold all my stuff, plus another copy of it all.

I put the upgrade tool I downloaded from Microsoft back on the USB and, surprise, it's showing what it's supposed to show when it boots now: an install and repair option. Repair brings me to the same advanced start up stuff that I have thoroughly troubleshooted with already, with the added bonus of command line no longer finding anything on any drives on the computer, or being able to fix what I changed to the boot folder this morning.

If that's different, I reason maybe some of the other tools are too. Resetting the PC does not work now because apparently the drive with Windows on it is "locked". System Restore tells me I need to pick which OS to use, even though it didn't give me a choice at first like before. System Image continues to be inexplicable. I'm not even gonna try clicking on Startup Repair just for it to tell me it can't do anything.

I'm really close to fixing this now, I just need a way for Windows to actually wipe itself clean and delete all my files of the computer. (against every instinct I have) I really hope I never have to clean off perfectly good files from a computer again, it's really stressing me out that I could do it all for no reason whatsoever and lose it all because of a command I myself gave the computer.

For this reason I have the system image open and copying some smaller folders onto the laptop to reassure me. Now, I just need some way to clean all this up.

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

Made another recovery tool using the laptop and reinstalled Windows using it. Computer is functional again.

Tried using the disk image. Still thinks they're incompatible, even though both the laptop and computer are Windows 10 x64. Trying to use the disk image also seemed to break Windows 10 again. From what I can tell, it gets far enough in restoring from the image to render the OS unusable, even though it does nothing with the image.

Let's just install Windows 10 again! It's not like I've been sitting around waiting for loading bars to fill up all week!



Made a new recovery tool with the fresh Windows install on the computer. Hesitant to try and use my image again.

I'm trying to verify that using a system image isn't going to delete it. Because if Windows will render itself useless in a botched image restore that doesn't even work, who's to say the image couldn't get lost in another botched attempt?

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10

Well it's working and my stuff is more or less here

More or less just manually restored my stuff off the image, though I did realize I'm missing certain things. I copied everything I made after the image, but not everything modified after it, so some stuff is dated.

But it could've been worse considering I accidentally formatted my computer.

Dumbassery was committed by both sides, and I stared long into the abyss of pointless loading screens so that the abyss stared back.

I still don't know why my drives played musical chairs on me. I don't have an Antivirus anymore to scan for anything lol

That was a real experience anyway, but if I have to post in here again anytime soon I'm gonna staple myself to a ceiling

 

[Keqing]

Re: should I get windows 10 - tb's computer is fixed lol

good job you killed bad guy

 

[Nabber]

Re: should I get windows 10 - tb's computer is fixed lol

by the way, if anyone is thinking of getting the windows 10 anniversary update that came out today, wait a few days. it's been crashing everyone's computers right now, including mine

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Re: should I get windows 10 - tb's computer is fixed lol

in the interest of documenting everything again, Im back


updated computer night before last, finished last morning, same exact shit's happened again


gonna back up some things using command prompt again and then see if I can just rollback this version



just pulled out the hdd and bought a thing to connect it to the laptop externally instead

plug it in but restart laptop, now laptop fails to start

recovery environment has something new apparently that lets you actually use safe mode, which works

drive letters havent moved around

try system restore for two updates ago, takes a long time (there was like 100 printer drivers changed), takes long time to reboot but comes back

says restore didnt even work, not sure if itll start up again


desktop can also get into safe mode, though no other options from recovery environment do anything