Windows Settings Won't Open

[MDNick]

Community, Thanks in advance,

Bought 2 new HP Laptops, delivered 11/4/20.  Both of them will not open the settings screen after going through the new initial Windows setup.  These are my 6th and 7th HP laptop in the past 6 months, and I am an engineer, so this shouldn't be complicated for me.  However, when choosing the settings COG from the start screen, the blue screen with the cog flashes, and then goes out immediately.  I've switched out of S mode on both, no avail.  All the various ways to open settings don't work.  One of the google results advocated re-setting the PC, which considering I've not used them yet, wasn't a concern for data loss, so I did that on one of them.  It restarts itself perpetually, flashes the %complete screen for less than a second (it's stuck on 64%) and reboots, to just do it again, cycling about every 10 seconds.  So that paperweight needs completely ...something.  I just spent $1700 on these 2 machines, so I shouldn't need to pay someone to fix it.  And yes, I did buy these off Amazon, so free Geek Squad isn't an option.

[IT_WinSec · Accepted solution]

Hello @MDNick 

Welcome ! I am sorry about the issues you experience.

This is obviously a software issue (corrupted user account initially and now the recovery failing to complete).

You do not need to pay anybody to have it fixed. Of course you can reach HP Support to have it fixed for free but it would be much easier and faster for you to simply reinstall Windows.

You may check the attached PDF file (below) and follow the steps to reinstall Windows yourself to have all these problems resolved.

Hope this works for you

[MDNick]

Your recommendation was spot on and flawless in its guidance for execution.  Both laptops were fixed by re-installing windows.  This also resurrected an older one as well.  Also far better to do the install myself than work through HP support. Thank you for the guidance and direction.  I was lost.