Laptop Won't Boot

[mpsparrow]

My brothers laptop keeps booting to the Windows 10 recovery screen. I have tried all the options in the Windows recovery screen apart from wiping everything and putting a fresh install on his computer. When I try and restore from a previous point on the computer or try and reinstall the OS but keep the files, it errors out and says that it didn't work. He doesn't have a recent backup of his computer to restore from.

 

I am thinking the best thing would be if I pull the hard drive out, plugged it into my computer, and recover the files. Then I just format the drive, reinstall Windows, and load back his files. Problem is, I can't do this because I am half way across the world from him at the moment.

 

So, got any suggestions? Or do I need to just talk him through what I just said above?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, mpsparrow said:

My brothers laptop keeps booting to the Windows 10 recovery screen. I have tried all the options in the Windows recovery screen apart from wiping everything and putting a fresh install on his computer. When I try and restore from a previous point on the computer or try and reinstall the OS but keep the files, it errors out and says that it didn't work. He doesn't have a recent backup of his computer to restore from.

 

I am thinking the best thing would be if I pull the hard drive out, plugged it into my computer, and recover the files. Then I just format the drive, reinstall Windows, and load back his files. Problem is, I can't do this because I am half way across the world from him at the moment.

 

So, got any suggestions? Or do I need to just talk him through what I just said above?

Just talk him through it. As long as he is somewhat technical, it should be no issue. I talked my sibling through installing a new HDD on his laptop and installing Windows when the original one died while he was in Japan.