Cannot install OS

[Kitsunefate]

My mother brought her laptop to me to fix. It wouldn't start up. Startup repair couldn't do anything, and neither could rolling back the computer. So I was forced to attempt to reinstall the OS. However, when attempting to install the OS after formatting the drive it will take hours just to get past the 'copying windows files' stage despite nothing being on the drive. At this point, the laptop has eaten 2 flash drives (they no longer work and were working perfectly fine beforehand).



I'm guessing this is some hard drive issue with maybe something hidden on the hard drive causing all these issues.



Just recently started giving the error code 0x80070057 now.

 

[Jwpanz]

How old is this laptop and what’s the model?

Stop trying to save it if it is somehow killing USB drives. There could be some form of malware infecting the laptop and is now affecting the USB drives. If the USB drives are fried then something physically wrong is going on inside that laptop like maybe some sort of massive power issue.

Most likely, though, the hardrive is failing and may be somehow corrupting the USB drives. The best thing to do here is to scrap that hard drive and buy a new one to replace it. Load a fresh copy of Windows into that new drive and you should be golden.

 

[Kitsunefate]

How old is this laptop and what’s the model?

Stop trying to save it if it is somehow killing USB drives. There could be some form of malware infecting the laptop and is now affecting the USB drives. If the USB drives are fried then something physically wrong is going on inside that laptop like maybe some sort of massive power issue.

Most likely, though, the hardrive is failing and may be somehow corrupting the USB drives. The best thing to do here is to scrap that hard drive and buy a new one to replace it. Load a fresh copy of Windows into that new drive and you should be golden.

I was planning to do just that, but it could have been something else. I simply have never run into or heard of this type of issue before.

It is a lenovo thinkpad x230 so from a google search at maximum 7 years old at this point.