Can't boot to Windows 10

[Snohomishwa]

Background: purchased computer Dec 2013. It shipped with Win 8 and I upgraded to 8.1 when I got it home.  Free upgrade to Win 10 in 2015 and successful update to  Creator Edition May 2017.

My problem began with the monthly updates on the 8th of August.  The update fix for Creator required a system restart and there was a brief power outage just as the screen flashed "do not turn off your computer".  While I was able to log into windows after this incident the update "fix" for Creator was still flagged as failed.  I used several different options trying to apply this fix including trying to install from the catalog with no luck.  I decided to use the system restore and roll my computer back to a date at the end of July.  

Big mistake now I can't get into windows at all.  Can anyone advise me the easiest way to get this computer back up and working.  I don't care about personal files.  By the way I should mention I did use the HP utility to do a quick test my computer hardware and it all seemed to be fine.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

The easiest way to get your PC running again, would be to make your own W10 installation media, using the Media Creation Tool at the link below.

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

You will have the option of making a bootable W10 usb installation flash drive, or create a W10 ISO file, which you can burn to a DVD using your DVD burner's program's burn ISO option.

When you get to the installation script where you are asked to enter a product key, select the 'I don't have a product key' option, and W10 will install and automatically activate once you are reconnected to the internet.

Then go to your PC's support page to install the drivers and available software.

[Snohomishwa]

Thanks so much  for quick reply but need a little more help.  When I select custom install it shows me Drive 0 with six partitions and asks where to install.  My choices are as follows: 1) Windows RE Tools, 2)System, 3) 128mb MSR Reserved, 4) Windows primary, 5)Recovery and 6) Recovery image OEM (Reserved).  Am I correct in guessing Partition 4?  Do I have to worry about any formatting issues?  Thanks again.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.

Yes, you are correct...if you want to leave the partitions intact, you should install W10 on the Windows primary partition.

You do not need to format the partition.  Just install W10 on it, and it will create a windows.old folder.

Then after W10 installs, you can explore the windows.old folder and copy any files you want to keep to your new user profile.

Once that is done, you can delete the windows.old folder by using the disk cleanup utility>click on the cleanup system files button when the disk cleanup window shows up.  It will run again and then you can check the boxes to delete any unnecessary files.

[Snohomishwa]

I will get started right away.  Many thanks for being there.