Windows PC Reset

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glenwilson

glenwilson

NRU Heed
NRU Member
15 Mar 2012
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Falkirk, United Kingdom
Neighbour had their laptop fail and I had a Dell Inspirion 6400 that they could use. Just got it back and thought it would be good to have as a backup for Procon use or as the connection to the NAS storage I have have rather than the PC it currently has. Trouble is that they cannot remember their password.

I have tried doing a reset using the shift+restart option to get into the menu to do a reset. Have tried doing a full reset (both disks), one disk, data only but they all fail with "unable to complete reset".

So then thought I would burn a Windows 10 DVD. Dowloaded the image from Microsoft and then used the Microsoft image burner but it says the 4.7 DVD doesn't have enough room. Also tried an RW but that was the same.

Then created a bootable USB Windows 10 stick but though you can set the BIOS to boot from it, as soon as it starts booting the laptop doesn't like it. Tried bot USB ports.

Probably have a Win 10 disk somewhere just cannot remember where it is.

Just wondering if anyone else has had the same issue or can think of something else to try.
 
i did´t use any "disc" for ages. only some bootable usb sticks and that is always working fine. just changing the boot order so it will go over the usb stick and anything is fine. but i also never create any "bootable usb windows copy" instead of just downloading one.

did you use the media creation tool from microsoft to get a bootable copy??
 
There is no hardware reset possible?
 
Didnt even know you could use DVDs for a reinstall of windows....might be my age sorry.

Funny things apart, I used to do recoverys/password resets a lot when I worked in a store. When the laptop boots, press the power button when you see the logo appear till the notebook shuts down again. Do this 3 times and windows 10 will automaticly boot into a recovery mode where you can reset and reinstall the notebook.
Might be worth a shot.
 
Didnt even know you could use DVDs for a reinstall of windows....might be my age sorry.
Joe Biden Reaction GIF by GIPHY News


Next you'll be telling me you never used floppy disks, the 8" ones
 
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There is no hardware reset possible?
I could go into the command line and reformat that way but don't want to do a reinstall if I don't have to.
did you use the media creation tool from microsoft to get a bootable copy??
Yes, for both the DVD and the USB. Says the blank 4.7gb DVD+R hasn't got enough capacity to create the disk! ISO is download from MS.
Funny things apart, I used to do recoverys/password resets a lot when I worked in a store. When the laptop boots, press the power button when you see the logo appear till the notebook shuts down again. Do this 3 times and windows 10 will automaticly boot into a recovery mode where you can reset and reinstall the notebook.
Might be worth a shot.
Tried the 3 power offs (that takes you to the same screen as doing a hold shift whilst clicking on restart). From these menus have done all the options but always get "There was a problem resetting your PC. No changes were made."


Thanks for all the suggestions so far!
 
Then created a bootable USB Windows 10 stick but though you can set the BIOS to boot from it, as soon as it starts booting the laptop doesn't like it.
It's not wanting the BIOS to be changed to UEFI or something, is it? Tho pretty sure that's too old for UEFI

Basically I'm trying to say have you tried to create a legacy bootable USB with rufus or something?
 
Joe Biden Reaction GIF by GIPHY News


Next you'll be telling me you never used floppy disks, the 8" ones
@samoz83 at the glorious age of 27 you can do the math if I may have used them ;)

@glenwilson sad to hear it didnt work. I may try to find something for you one of the coming days, how large was you USB drive, 8gb is the minimum for that tool from MS
 
@samoz83 at the glorious age of 27 you can do the math if I may have used them ;)

@glenwilson sad to hear it didnt work. I may try to find something for you one of the coming days, how large was you USB drive, 8gb is the minimum for that tool from MS
64gb Was trying to find something a little smaller.

Found a smaller Windows ISO and burnt that but it didn't like it. Can get a 128gb SSD for £17 so may get one and bung that in (currently has a 320gb HDD). Or get a bigger one and swap the PC one for the new one and then us that for the laptop. Or just forget it :D
 
why don't you try a linux install? :)
or does it has to be Win for Procon?
 
My daughter had to bring an object to school that no other pupil would know...
Thought immediately on 8" floppy.
Unfortenaly i was not able to find any in the office archives...
What was it? 80kb?
Glenn would have needed a lot of them...
 
why don't you try a linux install? :)
or does it has to be Win for Procon?
Just thought it would be useful to have another Win device but that is a good idea. What flavour would you suggest - been a long time since I looked at that.

I suspect that a lot of things that were there when I was young a lot of children wouldn't know. Telephones with rotary dials, Zip disks, 35mm film, punch cards, cassettes, 8 Track carts... Even things like pens, we had either BICs or fountain pens at school, "trainers" were Green Flash plimpsoles.
 
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Just cannot get Ubuntu to install. Created the bootable USB using rufus (twice) and it does nothing after booting - just goes to a FreeDOS prompt. The ISO file is 32gb so that ain't going to fit on a DVD despite saying that is an option. Going to try Mint.
 
OK. Tried Mint, it just sat there blinking the cursor at me. Checked the DVDs on another PC and they seem to be OK. Tried Windows again and it started the install and then came up with all sorts of errors about files missing. So have ordered a 128gb SSD for £20 and will try and install windows on that. If that doesn't work then I have a spare SSD.
 
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After a lot of attempts to get somethingloaded, all of which failed with an unhelpful error message, or nothing happening I couldn't understand why, even with the new SSD. Then though of the BIOS. Did a reset to default and that worked! Should have thought of that before. Got windows Pro installed on the HDD as a test so now need to wipe it and start again with Windows Home and on the SSD.
 
OK, so wiped it and reinstalled Windows Home to the SSD and it works OK and automatically activated. Boot time compared to the ancient HDD is striking. Once booted though it is as slow AF because it is an ancient laptop. Will do for YouTube and ProCon though! The £20 SSD seems to be OK for what I want.
 

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