Win10 machine rebooted during upgrade...

[Mister Fork]

...and now it won't boot.

My son's computer was acting up and he wanted to play Aces High with me and learned one of the hardest lessons about rebooting your machine, don't do it during a Win10 upgrade. I screamed at him as he started to do it as he was too impatient...ignored my pleas to not to...

So, now it does a bios post, dos windows 10 screen, black screen on both monitors like the login windows is about to appear and then... does a bios post, dos windows 10....black screen and over and over.

I tried to create a repair tool. Gets to the language select and freezes. So I create a Win10 install disk, goto repair....won't do anything. W. T. H. Nice tools there Microsoft.

You can't boot into safemode in Windows10 anymore from the keyboard... (use to be F8 or somthing) now all F8 does is bring up the boot manager.

Anyone got suggestions? Custom machine on Windows 10 Pro.

[Skuzzy]

Might this help? https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/16397-repair-install-windows-10-place-upgrade.html

[Mister Fork]

Yeah- thanks Skuzzy. I have the usb external drive with the OS install, but the options it's giving me are re-donkulas. It's only letting me do a fresh install and not reinstall over. I try the 'upgrade' It also won't let me repair or restore a previous version. Sooooo weird as every other option errors out saying it can't do that and the only thing that seems to be working is to do a fresh install. 

[Mister Fork]

I'm also pointing out that none of the options I see on all the tech forums and websites show you how to boot into safe or recovery from a fresh boot...they all point to "if you are in Windows 10, do this".  It's like most of these tech experts forgot that if you're having 'boot' issues, you can't exactly bring up the windows 10 menu cause well, you can't even get that far.

The younger tech's don't know the technical nirvana of DOS...

[FLS]

If you install Win 10 on a new HD you should be able to read all the files on the old HD.

[Mister Fork]

So there is some news...

1. Pray to the lords you never have a power bump during a Win10 upgrade. It'll destroy your build. 
2. With younger kids and their computers, make sure they don’t turn off system restore because they find it annoying and time wasteful. 
3. All of the repair tools with the Win10 OS is bunk. Basically, if you experience issues, only a complete rebuild can fix the issues.

Finally, educate your younger tech users about the virtues of proper power downs. A simple 1 minute was attempted to be cut from a proper reboot. And now we’re looking at a couple of days to rebuild. 

[Bizman]

Try this: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,393145.msg5217106.html#msg5217106

[Mister Fork]

Try this: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,393145.msg5217106.html#msg5217106

Thanks Bizman - I'll give that a try.

[TDeacon]

Another way to salvage files from an inoperable Windows install is to boot from a Linux Mint DVD (free ISO image download from their website, which must be burned to DVD).  You can then copy files from your Windows partition(s) to other media.  Then reinstall Windows.  This is exactly what I did with my old XP machine when it was taken over by ransomware. 

https://linuxmint.com
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/burn-mint

Unfortunately this only works if you have made such a DVD in advance, or have another working PC from which to make one. 

MH

[Meatwad]

I'm also pointing out that none of the options I see on all the tech forums and websites show you how to boot into safe or recovery from a fresh boot...they all point to "if you are in Windows 10, do this".  It's like most of these tech experts forgot that if you're having 'boot' issues, you can't exactly bring up the windows 10 menu cause well, you can't even get that far.

The younger tech's don't know the technical nirvana of DOS...

I have a laptop with Dos 6.22 for reading Motorola radios 

[Mister Fork]

I have a laptop with Dos 6.22 for reading Motorola radios 

..and I thought my WinMe laptop was old... 

It's back up and running. I've now created an image of his base install this time on our NAS. For the next time he does something unexpected... 

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

[Bizman]

Good you got it sorted.

For the record, what did you do?

[Mister Fork]

Did a new install using the Microsoft WIndows 10 media creator tool (Win10Pro 1803 version). When we did the install, Win10 identified the old one and created a Windows.old folder and stuffed the entire contents of previous install there.  Once complete, we just moved contents from his old profile back to the new. We could of copied over his old profile, but we did something different this time... (below)

And here are some lessons learned ...

1. We use Origin and Steam for most of our major games. Both Steam and Origin also use the cloud to backup in-game profiles, settings, and all other games settings/in-campaign saves.
2. When we were first prompted after the install was complete, we used his Microsoft account that he also uses for XBox and Minecraft.
3. Microsoft had already attached his WindowsPro 10 key to his account profile - so we didn't actually have to re-enter his key.
4. For all the Origin and Steam game installs, all we had to do is reinstall Steam and Origin, and point back to the original install directories. Origin verified all the previous games while Steam just went "ok - here are your games again".  That was it. No game re-installs required. Saved us hours of reinstalling software.

I'm torn about the fact that Microsoft already knew to attach his Windows10 key to his Xbox account. Torn actually - it's a good thing but also a little creepy.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯