Cannot recover from failed upgrade to Windows 10

[laborday95]

This is a 2012 laptop.  1 TB hard drive, 2 GHz processing speed, I believe 16 Gig RAM.  It was running Windows 7, but I have been getting frequent BSODs, so decided to upgrade to Windows 10.  It has been a disaster.  I'm currently just trying to get a working computer, but cannot even get it running of the "reset to factory settings" process.  My mouse and keyboard only work in safe mode.  Each iteration of trying to restore ot factory settings makes things worse.

Any suggestions for how to recover my machine?  Everytime I try to do the factory restore, it crashes somewhere.

I tried to just redownload Windows 7 from Microsoft, but when I enter my product key from the laptop, I get:

ERROR

The product key you entered appears to be for software pre-installed by the device manufacturer.  Please contact the device manufacturer for software recovery options.

Is there anyway to download Windows 7 from HP?  The laptop is well beyond it's warranty, obviously.

Thanks in advance!

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

You can make a plain W7 x64 Home Premium or Professional installation disk, and see if you can install W7 that way.

Click on the Windows ISO Downloader.exe link to download the tool to create the W7 ISO file download.

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-downl...

I have zipped up and attached the Microsoft utility below, that will allow you to either put the file on a USB flash drive or burn it to a DVD.

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

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/HP-Pavilion-dv7-7000-Entertainment-Notebook-PC-series/5226224/m...

Since your PC is more than 3 years old, HP will not have W7 recovery media for it, and you would have to try and find it on the secondary market such as from this vendor.

http://www.computersurgeons.com/

[laborday95]

Sorry, I thought I was replying to my own thread.  Don't know how it ended up here.  Can't figure out how to delete it.  Apologies.

[laborday95]

Thanks, I'm going to give that a try and report back.  I know my laptop is "old" by technology standards, but the hardware is still good and should be able to be restored to Windows 7 and handle an upgrade to Window 10.  The laptop didn't get much use other than Chrome, Spotify, and Office.

Just FYI, when I tried to recover from the HP Recovery tool, it starts the process, then I get a black DOS screen that says:

Windows Boot Manager

Windows failed to start.  A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.  To fix the problem:

1. Insert your windows installation disc and restart your computer

2. Choose your language settings, then click "Next"

3. Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

File: \Boot\BCD

Status:  0xc000000f

Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Unfortunately there is no way that I know of to repair an error when you use the HP recovery manager program or recovery disks.

It is an automated process, and it either works or it doesn't.

You should have no issues installing W7 from the disk or flash drive you make.

[laborday95]

I went to the link you sent, downloaded the ISO image, burned it to a DVD, but when I went to install from the disk, it says it's a Windows 7 upgrade.  I need the full Windows 7 version.  I can't upgrade because the computer is not in a state where I can run Windows, then run an update.

I checked the link you sent, and nothing in the window that opens indicates this is an OEM upgrade, but when I ran it, it said it was a Windows 7 upgrade.

What now?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I have never heard of that before.

If that is the case, download the COEM version.

That is the full W7 OEM version of the software.

[laborday95]

OK I clearly have had too little sleep and too little coffee.  I see now where the "Custom" option was what I needed to choose to install a full version of Windows 7.  Apologies... will update soon.

[laborday95]

Now my problem is I cannot install to any of the 4 partitions I have.  All partitions, when selected, give this error message:

Windows cannot be installed to this disk.  The selected disk has an MBR partition table.  on EFI systems, Windows can only be installed to GPT disks.

How do I resolve this?

Here is my partition information:

Partition 1: System - 199 MB total, 166 MB free

Partition 2 - 909.4 GB totaly, 904.5 GB free

Partition 3: Recovery - 21.9 GB total, 2.3 GB free

Partition 4: HP_TOOLS - 102 MB total, 74 MB free

[ieee488]

Before you spend your time installing, I would make certain that there is nothing wrong with the hardware specifically the hard drive.

Frequent BSODs is not normal and can be an indication of a failing hard drive among others.

HP has diagnostic software built-in. I would suggest running it.   Should be F2 when rebooting.

If your hardware checks out okay.

I would do an immediate install of Windows 10. I would not bother with Windows 7 then upgrading to Windows 10.

You will need your Windows 7 product key.

Install Windows 10 using USB created with Media Creation Tool.

Skip the step about the product key.

Then activate Windows 10 with the Windows 7 product key after Windows 10 is installed.

I did this recently and was able to activate Windows 10.