Question I want to reset my computer to factory settings but get an error when I try

[dave2164]

When I try to reset my pc it says "insert your installation or recovery media". What does this mean, and what do I do about it? I did not get this message while doing factory restores on previous windows computers.

Also, the reason why I want to do this is because there have been some strange crashes in games and glitches and things are a bit slower where I just want a fresh start as that seems a lot easier than trying to figure out exactly what the issue is.

 

[Colif]

Best way to avoid this error and get a fresh start on the PC is a clean install, instead of a factory reset. This makes sure everything is new. And it can turn out faster than doing a factory reset as wiping drive is faster than deleting files

download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

boot from installer

follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

 

[dave2164]

Best way to avoid this error and get a fresh start on the PC is a clean install, instead of a factory reset. This makes sure everything is new. And it can turn out faster than doing a factory reset as wiping drive is faster than deleting files

download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB

boot from installer

follow this guide: https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/how-to-do-a-clean-installation-of-windows-10.3170366/

I'm just worried I'm going to accidentally delete the OS and have a usb that ends up not being usable. I've never done this before.

 

[Colif]

You don't format the drive before you use the USB, so if the USB doesn't work, you will know that before anything bad is done to boot drive. The formatting ofg the drive occurs about half way through the install process so if USB doesn't work, you will know long before you delete drive. Yes, there is a small risk the USB still won't work from this stage but in most cases you will be fine.

If you make sure you have a copy of anything you need to keep, installing win 10 is pretty easy to do and not something you should pay others to do.

If you have a reasonably new PC and an ssd/nvme it will take 15 minutes or so to run.

 

[dave2164]

I'm still having problems. I followed the instructions to install windows 10 onto a bootable flash drive. But the computer doesn't recognize or let me boot from there. So I tried to install windows directly from the program on this drive. After two hours of appearing that it would work, the computer loads with the same version of windows and says it failed to install with the following message

We couldn't install windows 10
We've set your PC back to the way it was right before you started using Windows 10
0x1900101 0x20017
The installation failed in the Safe_0S phase with an error during BOOT operation

To reiterate, the problem is my computer has been slowing down lately along with some bugs that I can't determine the cause of and I just want a fresh start with fresh software as if the thing just came out of the box. It has always been much simpler to do a factory reset on any previous windows computers I had.

 

[Colif]

Is this a brand name PC or custom?
If brand name, what make/model?
If custom, what parts are inside?

if i know that i might be able to get you to boot off that USB.

it shouldn't take 2 hours to install. No more than an hour at most.

answers in this thread might help with that error - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...e0-11c7-470d-a7ab-fcda4765be24?auth=1&page=15

 

[dave2164]

Is this a brand name PC or custom?
If brand name, what make/model?
If custom, what parts are inside?

if i know that i might be able to get you to boot off that USB.

it shouldn't take 2 hours to install. No more than an hour at most.

answers in this thread might help with that error - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...e0-11c7-470d-a7ab-fcda4765be24?auth=1&page=15

It's a cyber power pc.
ryzen processor, amd gpu.

It did appear that it was booting off of the usb when I went to the bios, but then I get the same stuff as regular boot.

 

[Colif]

So does windows work right now?

Cyberpower would be using parts from other makers so knowing what is inside will help
can you run speccy https://www.ccleaner.com/speccy/download - all it does is shows whats inside the PC
if you can tell me from that program what CPU, motherboard and possibly storage drives you have, i might get as further into process.
Motherboard is the main bit I need really

how old is the PC?

 

[dave2164]

Windows does work and it's usable, it's just slowed down a bit lately, and crashes on games have been more common also. I thought a reset would help. It's not that I absolutely need to do so but am wondering why I don't have that option right now or what I would do if the problem gets worse. The computer is about 2.5 years old now so not new but not that old either. Perhaps some of the ccleaner software would help, like a disk defrag?


The motherboard is microstar International Ltd: B350m Bazooka (ms-7A38) (AM4). That's what came up when I ran speccy.
The cpu is ryzen 5 1600

storage harddrive is western digital wdc WD10EZEX-08WN4A0

 

[Colif]

Your motherboard has boot over ride. This lets you chosoe a drive to boot off once and then next startup goes back to normal - The installed boot-able devices will appear on this menu, you can select one of them to be the boot device.

put USB into PC at startup
go into bios
choose advanced view
navigate to the save & exit screen
pick Boot over ride
pick the USB from the list
PC will restart and boot from the USB

refer page 47 of your manual. If you don't have one, you can get it here on the manual tab - https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B350M-BAZOOKA#down-bios

follow guide - https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/windows-10-clean-install-tutorial.3170366/

 

[dave2164]

Your motherboard has boot over ride. This lets you chosoe a drive to boot off once and then next startup goes back to normal - The installed boot-able devices will appear on this menu, you can select one of them to be the boot device.

put USB into PC at startup
go into bios
choose advanced view
navigate to the save & exit screen
pick Boot over ride
pick the USB from the list
PC will restart and boot from the USB

refer page 47 of your manual. If you don't have one, you can get it here on the manual tab - https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B350M-BAZOOKA#down-bios

follow guide - https://forums.tomshardware.com/faq/windows-10-clean-install-tutorial.3170366/

So I followed the instructions listed above to create a bootable flash drive and waited for it to finish downloading. Then I go to bios and set it to boot from that drive but the computer is unable to do so. It just keeps restarting at that point and is unable to boot the media on the drive, so all I could do is set it back to boot from the default hard drive. I don't know what could have gone wrong.

 

[Colif]

did you use the same USB drive both times?
Maybe make installer on another PC?

I am just wondering if the problem is the installer.

just wondering, in the boot override screen, does the USB show up twice? Maybe one as just the USB name and another with UEFI USB in front? what can you see in menu?

 

[dave2164]

did you use the same USB drive both times?
Maybe make installer on another PC?

I am just wondering if the problem is the installer.

just wondering, in the boot override screen, does the USB show up twice? Maybe one as just the USB name and another with UEFI USB in front? what can you see in menu?

Yes I used the same one and yes I saw that title also in the boot sequence but I don't know what it is or have any other usb plugged in. I think you're right about the problem being the installer because I also tried to install windows directly from the file on the computer which also failed, and I couldn't even reinstall the discord desktop app, so I'd definitely like to know what I can do to fix this installer then.

 

[Colif]

I would suggest trying the Installer with UEFI USB in front of name as it might work

I would ask a friend to download the installer on their PC and use another USB drive as it could be the actual USB itself at fault.