Windows Reinstall

Story below this post is primarily a guide for myself.

In case Windows completely malfunctions

  1.  Boot from Windows disk and do a complete reinstall.
  2. Pull out the motherboard CD and reinstall drivers
  3. Do a Windows update


Cleaning out my computer had been on my to-do list.  By that I mean opening up the rig and blowing out all the accumulated dust.  Dust is a big enemy of large desktop computers so it is good to clean them once in a while.

However, it appears Windows 10 really didn’t like me unplugging all the USB accessories and putting them back in, perhaps not in the same spot.  When it started to boot with those little dots moving in a circle it just froze.  I turned it off and on, off and on.  It sometimes went into diagnose mode but of course diagnose mode in Windows *never* finds the solution or is able to fix things.  So after about half an hour of this I tried other recovery options such as booting to safe mode and could do so but nothing I tried solved the problem of Windows not booting.

I then tried a restore point to a few days ago and that just seemed to make the problem worse.  I could no longer boot into safe mode and just kept getting an error and restart every time I tried.  Then it was time for the nuclear option, a complete reinstall or “refresh” as Windows 10 calls it.  Well, guess what!  That couldn’t get started either and kept telling me there was an error.

So there I was, a computer that has a completely broken copy of Windows in it where nothing at all works.  I’ve learned that recovery options in Windows completely suck.  When there is a problem such as this, just trash the copy and do a complete reinstall, especially when talking about Windows 10.  I also learned a long time ago to keep all my data on a separate data drive because Windows will eventually break and your data will go along with it if you keep it in the same drive.  So, worse comes to worse I can always trash windows and reinstall.  Then it just takes a few hours to get all my programs /e-mail and other things back in place.

It was sitting there in despair that I remembered I had a major catastrophe like this sometime last year and had to reinstall.  I had thought for a second or two of just forgoing Windows and installing Ubuntu Linux but I like a few of the programs, especially Access, that can only run in Windows.  So I pulled out my Windows 7 disk and began the process.

Windows 7 didn’t take too long to get up and running.  However, I couldn’t get the internet to work and had forgotten why.  I installed a USB Wireless just so I could update which I thought might solve the problem.  It did update a lot of things but didn’t solve the LAN problem.

To make a long story short I had forgotten to reinstall the motherboard drivers.  Doh!!  I had completely forgotten this step and so once I remembered I wrote reminders down on the CD slip so I won’t forget again.

This time I’m not upgrading to Windows 10.  I’m perfectly happy with Windows 7 and it seems Windows 10 complies a lot of errors and then eventually just stops working.  I noticed the computer wasn’t going to sleep recently which is most certainly due to internal errors.  I also do not need or want Cortana or any of the other crap that comes with Windows 10.

So what is the point of all this?  Well, it is really just a reminder to myself on what to do for when Windows inevitably fails again.  I’m actually going to write the steps above.

By Mateo de Colón
