Initial setup of 2yr old HP Pavilion for my parents who just opened up the box

[legg84]

Problems with initial setup of HP Pavilion desktop stuck in “computer restarted unexpectedly” loop
not sure if 32 or 64bit - windows 10 home is all the box says. Parents purchased during Covid (Aug 2020) for a backup and just did open the box in June 2022 to setup only to find no papers or anything else in the box except for the PC and power cord - will not let me go through the windows install and setup and obviously out of warranty and cannot be returned to place purchased since it’s been sitting in the box for 2 years! Please help! 

[WyreNut]

Hello, and Welcome to the HP Support Community!

Friend...  You have given us very little to work with!!!   Provide the Model Number, please!

Was it new when purchased, or something used thrown in a box?

We can possibly direct you to a way to completely restore the hard drive (if it has one!) when you provide details...

WyreNut

[legg84]

Thank you for responding! It is an HP Pavilion Desktop  TP01-1247c and it was purchased from Sam’s club new or so they thought but it had no paper work at all in the box which I think is strange - anyway - I have tried a lot of things to resolve including getting it to a recovery state but it keeps getting stuck in loops - I opened it up and reseeded all of the cables inside and yes! Yay - it does have a hard drive and memory in it - I then plugged it back in a tried again and it went through what seemed an installation and now it’s stuck at an “Administrator”log in screen that says “the specified domain either does not exist or could not be contacted” I click ok and it just goes back to “login” and loops back and forth 

[WyreNut]

This does not sound like the behaviour of a brand new computer...

Check the information offered in this link:  https://www.wintips.org/fix-specified-domain-either-does-not-exist-or-could-not-be-contacted/

WyreNut

[legg84 · Accepted solution]

We did come to the conclusion that it was not a brand new computer and had been brought back to Sam's Club and re-sold.  The link you provided was no help as I could not access Windows and only work in BIOS and a Command Prompt.  

RESOLVED - by downloading a clean boot / install of Windows 10 Home from Microsoft.com onto a flash drive. Apparently even the system re-set and recovery partition was corrupted on this "brand new" PC. So frustrating. Lesson learned. . . . don't ever buy a computer and let it sit in the sealed up box for 2 years!