Unable to install Windows 10 on laptop

[MixedMartyr]

I have a Dell Latitude E6510 laptop which I purchased used with Windows 10 installed. I recently tried to install the Sims 3, but was having trouble with the .NET framework not working Windows update refusing to work. I did as much searching and troubleshooting as possible, but it seemed that installing a clean version of Windows 10 was the best way to fix the problem. I downloaded the media creation tool from Microsoft's website and used it to make a bootable flash drive. When I booted from the flash drive, the installation process worked until it got about 25% into installing, where it would simply restart and show nothing but a white cursor blinking in the top left of a black screen. There was no error message or warning, just immediately restarted and refused to boot. I tried creating the installation media on a different computer, using a different flash drive, and using a different hard drive in my laptop, but it has the same issue every time. I haven't been able to find any information about this online. Any Ideas?

 

[SchizTech]

Many Dell laptops have built-in diagnostic tools, which you should be able to access by hitting F12 at startup and selecting Diagnostics from the menu.

 

[mazboy]

It sounds as if you have access to multiple computers. I would suggest wiping the HDD from the laptop you intend to put it in (download DBAN from here: https://dban.org/)(here's how to use it: http://www.techfleece.com/2013/08/22/how-to-securely-wipe-your-hard-drive-using-dban/). Use the "Quick Erase" method. Here's the kicker: if there is a hardware problem with your computer, you won't be able to boot/use DBAN, and you will know that you need to look further.

If DBAN is successful and you get a good wipe, try to reinstall Win10 using the USB thumb drive again.

An interesting note: I've wiped 2 old 2.5" HDDs from a couple of old laptops in the last couple of weeks (one was a 60GB from an Apple PowerBook G4 and the other was an HGST 320GB from a Sony VAIO) and they both came up on DBAN as 2 distinct drives. For example, the HGST was shown as a 298GB drive and a 500MB drive. When I went to install Win10 on these drives, it took 3 repeated attempts before the OS loaded. I never interrupted the installation. When the installer went back to the start window, I just told it to try again. Indeed, on the 3rd attempt Win10 loaded and all is good with the world. I'm not bright enough to explain this, but if someone could, I'd love to learn!