PC Reset

[Luke5759]

I did a system reset to clean the PC to be able to give it away to the neighbor boy and it did not reset. Should have done a backup but foolishly did not. Now I have a required drive partition is missing error. Don't have a disk for an install.  Bought this PC with Windows 8 and upgraded to Windows 10. No disk or product key. Any ideas besides buying Windows 10 install?

Thanks,

Luke

[Bill_To · Accepted solution]

Hi

You can create W10 USB or DVD installation media at this site: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 

This will do a clean install after booting to this media and following prompts to install Windows.

Select I don't have a product key during the installation.

Windows should activate when connected to the internet because you have a digital license. You may have to sign in to your Microsoft account to activate the digital license.

[Luke5759]

Thank you. I will give it a go. I'll let you know how it goes.🙂

[Luke5759]

Created a W10 flash drive install. Plugged it in and was at the point where it asked what I wanted to install with, chose usb hard drive and all it does on the screen is flash the HP logo every 4 seconds. Doesn't seem to be doing anything.

Thanks,

Luke

[Bill_To]

Hi

My pleasure. The PC should boot to the W10 USB installation media since it seems you cannot load W10 now. There would be no other bootable drives except for the W10 USB media.

It sounds like you could have a hardware problem.

Start the PC. Tap the ESC key. Select F2 within the Start menu. Run component and system tests. This menu also provides access to the Boot Menu by selecting F9. Look for the bootable USB drive under UEFI boot options.

There could be a problem with the USB drive if it does not appear as a bootable UEFI drive. For example, you created the W10 USB media on a Legacy BIOS PC. Your PC is UEFI BIOS.

[Luke5759]

When I saw that it wasn't working, I tapped the F11 key repeatedly, again, to get back to where I needed to choose something and because the flash drive was now in the computer, it showed that it was available. My bad. I assumed that it would find it the minute I put it in. Everything worked great. Thank you very much for your help.

Thanks,

Luke

[Bill_To]

Hi Luke

My pleasure.