Question My optiplex 990 is not booting into a bootable USB. Whenever i try there is a black screen and nothing else. Any fix?

[cpdf98]

My girlfriend's optiplex 990 had two OS's on it. Linux and windows 10. Her copy of windows 10 kept acting up, and it wouldnt update either. So i figured the best thing to do would be to reinstall. I tried to reinstall, and went through the windows 10 install just fine, but once i got to the portion where you select the hard drive it kept saying it couldnt create a partition table on the selected drive. I tried several different solutions for that and neither worked, so instead i tried to install another distribution of linux on that drive just to see if there was something wrong with the drive itself. Since dual booting is easier on UEFI than it is on legacy i made sure to switch to UEFI at the time. I was able to install linux on it just fine, but noticed that the computer was going much slower now than it was before. I then tried to boot into a windows USB since i knew the drive was working normally. This time though, not only could i not boot into the windows USB, but i couldnt enter in to the linux distribution i had just installed either. I tried switching back to legacy to see if i could boot into anything, and i couldnt then either.

I am now at the point where i cant enter into either OS that is installed on my drives, and i cant boot into any bootable USB, whether it be linux or windows. Whenever i try i get nothing but a black screen. Im worried that i must have created some sort of logic error in the motherboard that i cant escape out of. I tried going into the BIOS settings and i hit "load defaults" but it still isnt working. Anyone have any advice?


EDIT: okay so i unplugged the ssd that i was trying to install windows on, and now i am fully able to boot into a bootable USB. I plugged the SSD back in and i get the black screen problem again. I think the SSD might be damaged in some way, though i dont know how. I was able to boot windows off it in the past, and bios is saying it recognizes that there is in fact a drive there. What could be causing this?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Might I ask if you created your bootable USB installer using Windows Media Creation Tools? If you're able to get into BIOS, please check and see what BIOS version you're on at the time of writing. As for your installation process, you're advised to install Windows 10 first then install the other OS if you want to have a dual boot system. Chances are that you will need to break all partitions and start anew. Are you using an HDD or an SSD? For the HDD, how old is it?

 

[cpdf98]

I have tried using a windows usb created by the windows creation tool and when that didnt work i even tried a linux tool. Both just get me a black screen.

As for the order of creating a dual boot system that really shouldnt play a role here. I have installed linux first and then windows and vise versa on several systems in the past.

I cant break the partitions up because it wont allow me to boot into anything. Like i said, when i click on the windows USB to try and get into the windows installer all i get is a black screen.

As for what type of drives there are two. One is a 500 gb HDD that is probably pretty old. The other is a 1 tb SSD that is just a couple months old.

Is it possible that i created some sort of logic error in the motherboard and thats why i cant boot into anything?