Today my computer randomly decided to stop booting so decided to try clean installing Windows. I somehow ended up accidentally creating a new install instead of overwriting the old one. Now when I try to boot it goes to some sort of instance selection screen and it than goes and automatically selects one, restarts and the following error pops up:
What do I do?
Update: neither instance works.
How should I go about turning it off so I don’t do any more damage?
Seems like you can’t do much more damage to the two Windows instances you have. A hard shutdown by holding the power button probably can’t hurt.
Assume you have Win 10 installation media ready to go. Start the install process again by booting to that media. When the page comes up to format and partition the drive, delete both old versions, and create a single partition. Then start the install process.
Good luck.
I successfully clean installed earlier. The installation wizard for what ever reason wouldn’t let me delete the partitions so I just formatted each partition individually which seems to have worked fine.
Does that mean you are up and running now?
I recall you replying to someone about Macs. If you have a Mac (or a Linux PC) anything but a Windows PC, you can go download a Windows ISO and burn it to a DVD to boot off of. I like this approach because you know you got a clean ISO direct from Microsoft, and nothing is going to alter that DVD after it’s burned. Of course if you don’t have a DVD drive on the Windows PC I guess that won’t help so much. You can also use a Windows PC to make a bootable USB device, but I fear the risk there is whatever malware might be around on the Windows PC making the USB might jump to the reinstall.
Anyway, the results from this URL are different if MS detects you’re on Windows, and it will send you to the USB tool instead of the ISO. You can mess with your browser’s Agent if you know how, but on a non-Windows PC it just does the right thing.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
I’m back up and running.
On a slightly different but related note, a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my PC was randomly stuttering occasionally. It’s still happening even after I clean installed Windows yesterday. Anyone have any ideas?
As of about an hour ago the computer is randomly dropping from the WiFi. This computer has had a great WiFi connection and is usually pretty stable. Anyone have any ideas?
If you reinstalled Windows, did you make sure you got the latest drivers for your [wireless] NIC(s) ? Intel has had some really sh*tty drivers of late, especially in WiFi and Bluetooth.
Windows update doesn’t see any updates for the wifi card drivers. I reinstalled Windows Friday night and only started these wifi issues since yesterday. I took a look at Event Viewer and I noticed that on Friday there were over 100 Kernel-PnP warnings in a span of a few minutes, a bunch of DistributedCOM warnings and a few of those errors, the occasional disk warning and 5 Service Control Manager errors today.
When you reinstalled Windows, did you also install the motherboard drivers for the PC? It may be the case you’re using Windows generic drivers instead of more specific drivers for your hardware, and that some feature specific to that hardware, that was giving you enhanced reliability in the past, is no longer present. Also if the MOBO drivers aren’t installed, then sometimes Windows Update doesn’t bother checking for updated drivers for that hardware.
yes I did. happened once after the update but has been good since.
Since reinstalled Windows I’ve noticed that the fans in the computer have been much louder and at times a little slower when Task Manager says that it’s running at its typical usage levels. Any ideas?
Check your system temperatures. Do you know what your normal baseline is (or was)? HWMONITOR | Softwares | CPUID
Right now the average is around 64° I don’t know what the baseline was before.
Have you re-installed the drivers for the BIOS/UEFI that controls the fans? Have the settings been somehow reset in the UEFI as well?
I don’t think I ever installed drivers for the fans. They were just being controlled by PWM. Actually now that I think of it when checked the CPU cooler was running at nearly 2500 RPM.
The fans are now quieter though. But it seems like it’s not getting a good reading because it is around the same. Also FANIN2 seems to have disappeared from HWMonitor.
I figured out that apparently most of the fan headers on my mobo don’t fully support PWM but apparently the CPU header does though. So, would I be able to plug my fan hub into the CPU fan header and plug the CPU fan into the fan hub?
Actually I just realized that I plugged all the fans into sys fan 1 and the sensor that’s showing high speeds is the chipset fan not the hub.
