Windows 10: Win 10 boot up issues several different PC's

Well, new here. Upgraded all of my PC's recently to Win 10. All ran well for a time. All except this (laptop) have now failed.
Most act like a bad HDD. The last one I just upgraded the other night, loaded all my software, started to use it, all fine. several days later (system left on around the clock) it gave a message saying there was an issue with the HDD. I rest and carried on, no issues. a day later it blanked out on its own while I was working on this laptop both were home grouped through the same net connection. the pc reset and said it was repairing itself, stayed at 76% for some time, than rebooted but as it did it would show the old XP pro win pic briefly and than blank out. than it would come up with the recovery screen. normal setup, safe/with/without... but no matter which I try it just loops back to the same. I tried to make a usb boot stick but it does not even see the usb apparently. So I guess I need help in salvaging this one first before moving on to the others. I'm not a programmer, but very familiar with hardware though this newer stuff is getting away from me.
System is a 64k Dell OptiPlex 960 intel core 2 vppro with 8gb ram 2T Win drive. was XP Pro upgraded to Win 8.1 pro, upgraded to win 10 pro.
Would appreciate help with this mess. Thank you Obie Wans out there!! Your my only hope!

:)

 

dual boot to win 7

I have a near new PC (kit built) that had Win 7 home edition installed. I did the solicited win 10 upgrade. I was in the process of moving at the time and didn't use the PC much for several months. I noticed when I upgraded to Win 10 as it was booting
up there was the possibility of selecting either Win 10, or Win 7. I assumed this was a dual boot option, but didn't even try the Win 7 option for several months--due to the moving. When I did use it, I used Win 10 to try to get accustomed to it. When I
had a need to use Win 7, I tried that selection, but have been VERY disappointed in the extremely limited functionality of the Win 7 "option".

My primary question is: Is the how this " Win 10 upgrade is supposed to work? or did I do something wrong when I was starting up the new installation?

 

IMPORTANT: Reinstalling Windows to force Remix OS's GRUB bootloader off the PC

I had the same problem but with Ubuntu

so to fix go on a different pc download this win 10 installer make a win 10 boot drive. on the bad pc put the usb in. right after pressing the power
button press F12 to bring up boot menu select usb device and insall new win 10 copy

 

If you suspect disk failure you should check that first. What I usually do is to take it out and connect to my desktop computer and check it from there. It's most probably a SATA disk which has same connections as normal, desktop disk. There are many programs for that. HDD manufacturers have their own programs, you can find some here: Download Hard Disk Drive (HDD) Tools Tools for Windows - MajorGeeks
Any bad sectors or even large number of relocated sectors spell trouble.
A look at SMART table can also tell you a lot. Download HDDExpert - MajorGeeks just some of free ones.

 

The other 2 act like drive issues. they will pretty much just sit there. This one just loops. Its like it gets turned off as soon as it starts to initiate windows. But it also seems to be trying to start the wrong windows. I see a glimpse of the old win xp start pic and you hear the power reset like it had the reset button pushed. than a variation of the false start screen, none of the choices yield anything different. Safe modes will load a list of startup files but stop at the same point than it all does the same.
If these are dead drives, how can I recover data from them? preferably i'd like to get them going again first, that seems the best way.

 

For best chance to retrieve data from (suspected) bad or partially bad drives it's best to use them least possible. More you play with them, more chance of something being overwritten or them dying all together. Connecting them directly to known good system will give you best chance. Too bad you have trouble booting from USB, I always keep a live Linux on one of them, boot to it and can retrieve files like that no matter if OS on disk is screwed up.
About those glimpses of XP, there may be a recovery partition that it tries to boot to first.