Windows 10: USB reinstall win10 Fails, bad HDD? CPU?? Repairing friends laptop

Hello! Heres the short version: I am attempting to reinstall win10 via USB on a machine stuck inWindows Automatic Repair Loop. The reinstall fails and I am wondering if that is confirmation of abad HDD or if some other thing could be the culprit.


Longer Version: I have amateur experience replacing dead componentsbatteries, CPU's, fans, screens in laptops for friends/family. I am hoping all I need here is a new HDD but I wanted to double check with you folks since I still don't really know what I'm doing. Note: I don't have spare parts to test with :/ I wish I did because that'd make this really easy.


I think I have isolated the HDD as the issue since:


1 The laptop powers on

2 I can get to BIOS

3 Windows attempts repairs and has confirmed via CLI; there's a "Drive Error" that "Could not be fixed"

4 I cannot reinstall windows via Removable Media

-I can go through the entire process and it seems to finish. BUT when the laptop restarts at the end of the install, I'm back the start of the install screen like nothing happened.


Do I need to replace HDD or does this seem like something else?

:)

 

Reinstalling Win10 On New Hard Drive, current hdd is failing and i need to replace.

Reinstalling Win10 On New Hard Drive, current hdd is failing and i need to replace fast! Backup and restore misses several key files so can't transfer to new hdd.

I need to reinstall my winOS on a new hdd, current hard drive is failing fast! I bought Win8, upgraded to 8.1 free, then 10 free. I can't find Win 10 Product Key Only Product ID Listed In SysInfo.

Can I download Win10 for free somewhere, and locate the Product Key to install for free, or do I have to buy the complete WinOS 10 Pro to the tune of $200!!!? Help Please! Thanks so much!

 

HDD Bad Sector

Hi Nataniel!

I am not sure what your question is exactly, but one thing I'd recommend for sure will be to look for a replacement drive since there is already a bad sector on your current one.

Basically there are two kinds of bad sectors - hardware and software:

• Hardware ones are caused by physical damage or becoming magnetically fixed, and they are unrepairable. In short, once they appear it's only a matter of time (no way to say how long) until the HDD fails.
• Software bad sectors on the other hand occur when something called an Error Correction Code (ECC) doesn't match the contents of the hard drive. These can be repaired by overwriting the data on the drive with zeroes (a.k.a. low level formatting) and sometimes
  by running a **chkdsk [write the letter of the drive:] /r** in the CMD.

As for getting the information from the drive if one of the partitions fail, most likely you won't be able to, which is why I'd suggest to make a regular backup of your most important data.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

 

An HDD with Windows 10 connected to another machine won't boot when inserted back into the original machine

Hi, thanks for the response.

• No changes were made to the machine. It can be a working win10 laptop, I just extract its HDD and plug it into another win10 machine to test it, and after reinstalling it into the laptop it can stop booting up.
• I tried startup repair - fail. Chkdsk - no errors found. Bcd repair fails, too.
• It's happened a couple of times already.
• Around one year ago.
• The OS fails to boot up and goes straight to startup repair. Then it says that it could not perform startup repair. Unfortunately, I cannot provide a screenshot, but I will if I have a chance.
• The machines might not have the same build, I didn't check, but I think it has happened both with HDDs with the same build of win10 and different builds.

Thanks.