Blue Screen after Microsoft update......

[haMEGGANdcheese]

So, Microsoft did an automatic update during the night and now the computer won't come back on. It comes up with a blue screen and an error message. It says something about the option to re-install windows from an external device but we are concerned about losing all of the stuff on the hard drive. Is it possible to save everything on there and get it working again? Or at the very least just get windows re-installed. ( I bought it in 2019 so it is out of warranty) I've sort of looked up how to go about re-installing windows but I can't figure out where to find the COA code. Can anyone help me?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

If you are wanting to recover your documents, files, music, pictures, etc., there is a way to do that when you reinstall Windows.

I do it all the time.

I hope that you have learned from this unpleasant experience the need to do periodic backups of your files and save them on a portable hard drive.

The first thing to do is to make a W10 installation flash drive with the Media creation tool from the link below.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

Boot from the installation media.

The usual method to do that is to have the USB flash drive plugged into your PC.

Turn it on or restart it.

Immediately, press/tap the ESC key to get the menu of options.

Select the F9 boot options menu and from that, select the USB flash drive with W10 on it and press the Enter key.

The PC should now boot from the flash drive.

Click on the' Install now' option, after the Windows setup files have loaded from the flash drive.

This is important...when you get to the part of the installation that asks, 'Where do you want to install Windows,' install it on the existing Windows partition you see there, and it will create a Windows.old folder.

After W10 has completed installing you can explore the Windows.old folder, find your old user profile and copy and paste the folders in your profile to the new profile and it will overwrite the empty folders with your files.

If you need to add more user accounts to the PC, do so and after they are created you can go back to the Windows.old folder and copy the files from those old user profiles to the new Windows installation when you log into that profile.

What I do is to set up the profiles with no password and then do the file copying.

Once that is done, I notify my family members that use the PC, that they can now set an account password on their account.

Then I recommend you get a portable hard drive that is large enough to store a backup of the file folders from your user profile and all of the other user profiles on the PC, if applicable.

That way if this happens again or worse yet, the hard drive fails and you can't recover any data, you have it saved.

You can overwrite the folders you save on the portable hard drive from your Windows profile at any time.

Do that as needed (you have new pictures, new documents, etc.).

Then you can install the drivers and available software from your PC's support page.

HP Pavilion All-in-One - 24-r114 Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Customer Support

The nice thing about PC's that come with Windows 8 and newer, is that there is no need to know or have a product key written down. 

The product key is encrypted in your PC's BIOS.

That is why you will find that during the installation process, Windows won't even ask you to enter a product key, and you will find that the PC has been automatically activated after you have connected to the internet.

You have the option to now use the PC as is, or now that you have your files safely stored on an external USB (portable) hard drive, you can use the HP cloud recovery tool to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with the PC.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility.  You will need a 32 GB USB flash drive for this.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Customer Support

You can download the software from the Microsoft Store.

HP Cloud Recovery Tool - Microsoft Store Apps

If you decide to use the cloud recovery tool, it is imperative that you back up any files you want to save onto a portable hard drive from all user profiles, because the tool will erase everything on the drive and rebuild the system image to its 'out of the box' condition.

If you want to use the tool to create the recovery drive on another PC, you will have to enter your PC's product number in the tool's search window.

Your PC's product number is:  3LA02AA#ABA