New install of Windows 10 failing to boot

[crux47]

Hello.

To preface, this is happening on my little brothers PC that lives in another state. I sent a bootable USB with Windows 10 on it to install as his old OS stopped working.

I had him boot to the USB and start the setup. Blew away old partitions and ran the setup on unallocated space. The install itself seems to run without issue, completes, then prompts to restart. After restarting it will hang at the Windows 10 logo on black screen attempting to load for 20-30 minutes, then fail. Returning 'Your PC couldn't start properly. Error code: 0xc0000001'

Tried running Startup Repair from the USB, fails almost instantly and creates log at E:\WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt. Initially I thought that was the issue, the fact that it appeared to be assigning the install drive letter E. Diskpart showed the System Reserved partition assigned letter C, and Windows installed and assigned to letter E. But reading other things has steered me away from thinking that's the problem here and it should correct the lettering once booted into Windows. Correct me if I'm wrong.

E:\WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt displays nothing useful, root cause found states 'Failure while setup is in progress.' Tried the repair multiple times, always the same result.

Tried running -
BOOTREC /FIXMBR
BOOTREC /FIXBOOT
BOOTREC /REBUILDBCD

Rebuild prompts that there are 0 installations of Windows identified and won't let me rebuild.

I've tried redoing it all together and reinstalling Windows, same thing happens. Tried correcting assignment letters with diskpart from windows recovery tools, same issue and it assigns the letters back after restarting anyway. Reset BIOS defaults, unplugged every peripheral and disk drives, same issue.

Not sure where to go from here. Was going to see if his motherboard/bios wasn't compatible but I thought they made that nearly impossible. Could the USB of gotten corrupted when I shipped it to him? Any help appreciated.

 

[XM Keeper]

Okay, so you shipped your friend a thumb drive with the windows 10 installation software on it? He then proceeded to install windows on his hard drive, the same hard drive that he previously had his previous windows installation on, then he rebooted the computer only for it to fail to start windows? That is my understanding of it.

There is always the possibility that it didn't install right or something like that. It wouldn't be a bad idea to try and reinstall it from scratch again.

But you did say that his previous installation of windows went bad, right? Maybe there is something wrong with his hard drive.

 

[crux47]

Okay, so you shipped your friend a thumb drive with the windows 10 installation software on it? He then proceeded to install windows on his hard drive, the same hard drive that he previously had his previous windows installation on, then he rebooted the computer only for it to fail to start windows? That is my understanding of it.

There is always the possibility that it didn't install right or something like that. It wouldn't be a bad idea to try and reinstall it from scratch again.

But you did say that his previous installation of windows went bad, right? Maybe there is something wrong with his hard drive.

I've tried reinstalling it 3 or 4 times now, same issue every time. His old OS was booting and running, it just kept getting random Windows errors because he couldn't install updates and many other things. It was just an old Windows 7 installation that needed refreshing.

 

[XM Keeper]

Okay, so you shipped your friend a thumb drive with the windows 10 installation software on it? He then proceeded to install windows on his hard drive, the same hard drive that he previously had his previous windows installation on, then he rebooted the computer only for it to fail to start windows? That is my understanding of it.

There is always the possibility that it didn't install right or something like that. It wouldn't be a bad idea to try and reinstall it from scratch again.

But you did say that his previous installation of windows went bad, right? Maybe there is something wrong with his hard drive.

I've tried reinstalling it 3 or 4 times now, same issue every time. His old OS was booting and running, it just kept getting random Windows errors because he couldn't install updates and many other things. It was just an old Windows 7 installation that needed refreshing.

Hmm. There is a possibility that there is something wrong with the installation media. You said he is in a different state, so this isn't a direct hands on problem. Is there a possibility that you're missing a piece of the puzzle?

So he puts the install thumb drive in, boots from it, configures windows installation properly, installs windows, restarts, removes it, then attempts to boot from the drive with windows, then that is where the problem is?

The only possible failure points I see are: Hard drive(but it seems that is ruled out), incompatibility issue with board or hard drive/incompatible BIOS settings(but you said your reset the BIOS, so.....), or bad install media.

That is all I got.

 

[crux47]

Had my brother create the EasyRE (https://neosmart.net/EasyRE/) drive and run it. It ran through and finished it's repair but didn't seem to fix anything, of course. But something I noticed before it started, was that it wanted him to choose the drive/OS to attempt a repair on. It lists two options, and it's naming the System Reserved drive as 'Boot Volume'. I would think the system reserved drive shouldn't be listed at all there, let alone named Boot Volume. That leads me back to my original thinking of Windows is trying to boot from the system reserved drive instead of where Windows is actually installed.

https://imgur.com/a/DTUBq