Windows broke, what should I do?

[kioskhill45]

When i turn my pc on, it says itll start auto repair, then bring me to a blue screen saying it failed. Every option in troubleshoot either restarts my pc and doesnt work, or just says it didnt work. The day before this happened, i had just bought a windows 10 home key to activate my pc from kinguin if that says anything. Thank you very much!

[Mira Yurizaki]

Can you grab the STOP code from the blue screen? It'll help narrow things down.

[kelvinhall05]

Just reinstall Windows from a USB or CD.

[Tiberiusisgame]

Restore from your backup. You did create a backup, right? ;-)

[Tiwaz]

Sorry windows ?️roke

[johnukguy]

Try the system reset.

[kioskhill45]

On 1/3/2018 at 12:26 PM, Tiberiusisgame said:

Restore from your backup. You did create a backup, right? ;-)

I regret to say this, but I did not create a backup...

 

On 1/3/2018 at 12:25 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

Can you grab the STOP code from the blue screen? It'll help narrow things down.

What is the stop code?

 

On 1/3/2018 at 1:03 PM, johnukguy said:

Try the system reset.

All options on the blue screen, including reset, either restart the pc and don't do anything, or say it couldn't work.

 

On 1/3/2018 at 12:26 PM, kelvinhall05 said:

Just reinstall Windows from a USB or CD.

It would just restart and bring me back to the same blue screen.

[johnukguy]

Have you tried a cold boot? Might sound odd but that can sometimes help.

[Mira Yurizaki]

6 minutes ago, kioskhill45 said:

What is the stop code?

Example:

[kioskhill45]

On 1/3/2018 at 1:59 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

Example:

It didn't give me this screen, it brought me straight to the blue screen I shared that said Automatic Repair

 

On 1/3/2018 at 1:57 PM, johnukguy said:

Have you tried a cold boot? Might sound odd but that can sometimes help.

What is that?

[Mira Yurizaki]

3 minutes ago, kioskhill45 said:

It didn't give me this screen, it brought me straight to the blue screen I shared that said Automatic Repair

Oh, when you say "blue screen" in the context of Windows, that's what it usually means. But I guess I didn't read it clearly enough

 

Can you get into Safe Mode? (https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10 scroll down until you see the options menu you posted before)

[johnukguy]

Turn off the PSU switch at the back of the PC. Unplug it. Press the front power button to discharge any remaining current. Leave it for a minute or so then plug the PSU back in, turn the switch on. Press the front power switch. Then try the repair option again if it takes you there. I would also though suggest that you set the BIOS to optimized defaults and see if that helps and, if you can, try a different drive/SSD and see if it is your drive that is the likely problem.

[kioskhill45]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Oh, when you say "blue screen" in the context of Windows, that's what it usually means. But I guess I didn't read it clearly enough

 

Can you get into Safe Mode? (https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10 scroll down until you see the options menu you posted before)

I'll try it, but what will I do when I get into safe mode?

[johnukguy]

The first thing is just to see if you can. If you can, then it means that the issue might be more driver/OS related than hardware. Try scheduling a disk check if  it gets into Safe Mode ok.

[Mira Yurizaki]

2 minutes ago, kioskhill45 said:

I'll try it, but what will I do when I get into safe mode?

This is more of a sanity check. If you can't get into Safe Mode, something's probably wrong with either the Windows install or storage. If you can get into Safe Mode, something is wrong with the Windows install, at which point back up any data you want to keep and reinstall Windows.

[kioskhill45]

7 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Oh, when you say "blue screen" in the context of Windows, that's what it usually means. But I guess I didn't read it clearly enough

 

Can you get into Safe Mode? (https://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-ways-boot-safe-mode-windows-10 scroll down until you see the options menu you posted before)

Okay, it just brought me back to the auto repair blue screen, didnt work. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, kioskhill45 said:

Okay, it just brought me back to the auto repair blue screen, didnt work. 

If you can, plug the OS drive in another computer and back up the data you want to keep. If you don't have another computer to do this with, you can usually find a Linux live distro that'll let you do this.

 

Either, I'm calling the OS installation broken and it needs a reinstall. If reinstalling doesn't work, the storage drive is likely defective. The only caveat is that the install media should also be a known working copy.

[kioskhill45]

On 1/3/2018 at 2:11 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

This is more of a sanity check. If you can't get into Safe Mode, something's probably wrong with either the Windows install or storage. If you can get into Safe Mode, something is wrong with the Windows install, at which point back up any data you want to keep and reinstall Windows.

Its probably windows at this point

 

On 1/3/2018 at 2:16 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

If you can, plug the OS drive in another computer and back up the data you want to keep. If you don't have another computer to do this with, you can usually find a Linux live distro that'll let you do this.

 

Either, I'm calling the OS installation broken and it needs a reinstall. If reinstalling doesn't work, the storage drive is likely defective. The only caveat is that the install media should also be a known working copy.

I wasn't able to reinstall. It told me to restart the system and unplug and replug the usb drive, but restarting always brings me to the auto repair screen, and custom said that the drive wasn't formatted correctly. At this point I don't care if I lose data, I just want a working pc...

[johnukguy]

Have you tried a different USB flash drive?

[Oliveer]

similar thing happened to me. I had to buy a new hard drive and fresh version of windows.

[Donut417]

On 1/3/2018 at 3:49 PM, kioskhill45 said:

I wasn't able to reinstall. It told me to restart the system and unplug and replug the usb drive, but restarting always brings me to the auto repair screen, and custom said that the drive wasn't formatted correctly. At this point I don't care if I lose data, I just want a working pc...

In this case, Id try a live CD version of Linux and see if you can just format the drive, at least delete the partions for Windows, this will stop the start up errors as there would be no OS. Once the partions are deleted, then try to boot in to the Windows installer.