Question Laptop won't restore - None of the options are working

Dlink10

Reputable
Jun 27, 2015
2
0
4,510
My Laptop (Win 10, Acer Aspire 5) crashes twice upon boot up, diagnoses PC, and then goes to the options page where I have to pick how to restore. None of the options are working (restore while saving files, restore while deleting everything, restore from previous point, boot from USB, etc.) - they all come up with errors and nothing changes. Not sure what the issue is as the laptop was working fine prior to this. I've had problems with the hard drive in the past so I've considered just swapping HDs and reinstalling windows - would that work or is something else potentially wrong?
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
its possible the image that windows uses to restore are corrupted. Best idea would be to try a clean install

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

anything on laptop you want to save?
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd

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

you can do that on current hdd or new one if you prefer.
 

Dlink10

Reputable
Jun 27, 2015
2
0
4,510
I did that and it seemed to work (I went through set up with Cortana and can access desktop) but now my laptop is really (significantly more than before) slow and there are no programs installed under the control panel - is this normal? It also didn't ask for a product key like it did in that guide.
 

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