Question Boot loop after Factory Restore ?

scooter_2478

Honorable
Sep 21, 2017
6
0
10,510
Hiya all,
I have a Gateway laptop (thin ultrabook like) model GWTN116-1 that I did a factory restore. After the factory restore the laptop is in a boot loop and flashes for a second of "Installing Windows 64% Dont turn off your PC this will take a while, Your PC will start several times" which I let go for many hours with no progress. From what I understand it has eMMC storage type soldered onto the motherboard and no hardware can be added or removed due to everything being soldered on. The BIOS doesn't show any drives in the SATA and NVME section of the BIOS. I have tried changing SATA to legacy IDE and AHCI, also CSM enabled with either UEFI or Legacy with no change. I can access the EFI Shell and it does display the partitions. I can boot to a windows installation USB but it doesn't show any drives to install to. I found a list of drivers online but they are only for wifi, display etc. and cant seem to find the storage device drivers. I tried the windows command prompt built into the windows USB installer but the rstrui.exe command doesn't work. I installed windows 10 to a flash drive using RUFUS and no drives were detected other than the USB which windows was installed onto. I can provide pictures if that would help. Any help would be appreciated, Thank You.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
i hate it when factory restore goes too far and removes windows completely

Curious what partitions efi shell can see. can you show some photos? upload to an image sharing website and show link here.

have you tried an ubuntu live USB to see if it can find any drives. https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu

it came with win 10 - https://gatewayusa.com/GWTN116-1.html
wonder where you get drivers from? Walmart? thats where you buy it and I can't see a driver listing on Gateway site.

try making installer using media creation tool
what format did you make it in RUFUS? UEFI or MBR?
 
Last edited:

scooter_2478

Honorable
Sep 21, 2017
6
0
10,510
Thank you,
I had used the windows installer with the media creation tool and it doesn't detect the storage.
I have used Easeus partition master and it does detect the drives and partitions but wont allow me to do any formatting or deleting only scanning.
I haven't tried an ubuntu live USB to see if it can find any drives so I'll have to try this.
I didnt know what image service to use so i just used my IG.
View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfyD0S0OygS/

View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfyEUjuOps-/