Refresh of laptop

[Charlala]

I refreshed laptop acting crappy. Now this message shows...The computer restarted unexpectedly or encountered an unexpected error. Windows installation cannot proceed. To install Windows, click "OK" to restart the computer and then restart the installation. Can someone please tell me what happened and if I can reverse it? Thank you.

 

[Colif]

do you have a win 8.1 installer?

if not, dl it from here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows8

you might need to do a clean install since the reset clearly broke.

change boot order in BIOS so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer

follow this guide: https://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2299-clean-install-windows-8-a.html

if win 8 anything like win 10, you might get an error about GPT drives during the install. The answer is to delete all the partitions on drive and click next.