Windows 10: Windows 10 USB Boot Restart Loop

I've been troubleshooting my device for about a week, I've spent at least 12 hours messing with it so far, and I don't think I've made any progress. Any help would be very much appreciated!


TL;DR: My laptop does not currently have an operating system, and it refuses to boot/install Windows from a USB. I have already changed the BIOS boot options to disable secure boot and disable legacy support. I have also already set the UEFI Boot Order to read USB first. The USB I'm trying to boot from has a burned copy of the Windows 10 ISO burned via Rufus.

With the USB ready to go and already plugged in, I turn on the laptop. This screen flashes for half a second, and then the HP logo displays on the screen for about 24 seconds. The cpu fan also turns on during this process. After these 24 seconds, the laptop shuts down and the fan stops. Immediately, the laptop automatically restarts, and the fan begins again. This loops indefinitely until I either hold down the power button to turn it off, or I press the esc key repeatedly immediately after a restart.


What can I do to make my laptop boot windows?


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About four years ago, I purchased an HP Pavilion Notebook, product number V5C49AV, Serial Number 5CD6482FWC, Bios Version F.23. It's a 64 bit machine. This notebook had Windows already installed when I purchased it. I can't remember if it originally had Windows 8.1 or 10, but if it did come as 8.1, I quickly upgraded it to Windows 10. I've used Windows 10 on this device for as long as I can remember.


Fast forward to this week. I decided that I wanted to re-install a fresh copy of Windows. So, I made a backup of my personal files on a removable drive. Then, I navigated to Windows settings --> Update & Security --> Recovery --> Reset This PC. I clicked "Get Started," and then "Remove Everything", and I followed the entire reset process. Just as it was finishing up, the computer rebooted which was expected. Although, as it was in the process of turning on, the HP Recovery Manager appeared, with the text: "Restoration Incomplete." There was a log file and some additional debug info provided too, but at that time I didn't think to get a copy of it. All I remember from the log file was that there was a "bad line in install.log."

Upon trying to restart, I was returned to this same HP Recovery screen.

I again restarted the laptop and navigated to the Windows Recovery Environment. There, I tried using all of the options available to me to troubleshoot why it wouldn't load, but nothing worked. Everything either produced errors or returned me to the HP Recovery screen: Restoration Incomplete.


At this point, I created my own USB Installation Media:

The ISO I am using is Windows 10, Version 2009 - 20H2 build 19042.631 -- Win10_20H2_v2_English-x64.iso
I obtained the ISO from https://tb.rg-adguard.net/public.php, and the Hash is verified as follows:
SHA1: 69a1739609c1059fdd2e0688891bf59a78413c6b
SHA256: 6c6856405dbc7674eda21bc5f7094f5a18af5c9bacc67ed111e8f53f02e7d13d
Note that I didn't use the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool because there is no process to verify the Hash using that method additional details on that issue can be foundhere.

I used Rufus version 3.13.1730 to burn the ISO onto my USB.

Partition Scheme: GPT

Target System: UEFI

File System: NTFS


**I changed the boot order to boot from USB First. In the BIOS, I disabled "Secure Boot" and I checked that "Legacy Support" was also disabled so that it would boot in UEFI. I plugged in the USB and restarted the laptop. This screen flashed for half a second, and then the HP logo displayed on the screen for about 24 seconds. The cpu fan also turned on during this process. After these 24 seconds, the laptop shut down and the fan stopped. Immediately, the fan began again and the laptop automatically restarted. This would loop indefinitely until I either turn it off via the power button, or I press the esc key repeatedly immediately after a restart to get to the startup menu.**


Seeing that this didn't work, I navigated back to the Windows Recovery Environment and I launched command prompt. To my surprise, I actually managed to run the same "Setup.exe" located on the USB Installation media I had made earlier, and the Windows Installer opened! I went through the steps to install windows, and when I got to the screen that asked me what partition to install Windows on, I deleted all of the partitions Remember, I already backed up everything on a separate unit. Then, I selected "Drive 0: Unallocated space" to be the install location- I figured the installation process would create whatever partitions it needed.

Well, I was wrong. Something went wrong, and unfortunately I didn't think to record any particular error codes that resulted. And since I deleted all of my partitions, I no longer have access to the Windows Recovery Environment. The section marked in *asterisks* above is all I've got to work with now.


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I attempted a ton of other troubleshooting. A few items I tried are:

-I attempted using two different USBs for the boot one was 16GB, the other was 64GB. Both failed.


-I also tried burning the same 64 bit version I mentioned using the below Rufus settings:

Partition Scheme: MBR
Target System: BIOS or UEFI-CSM
File System: NTFS

I enabled Legacy Support for this UEFI-CSM, but it still didn't work- though I did get slightly different results. Upon startup, the windows logo flashed once in the center of the screen, and then flashed broken up intothree logos as shown. This only lasted a half-second before they disappeared. Then a white underscore blinked in the top left corner of the screen for a few seconds. Then, the Windows logo appeared one more time before the laptop promptly restarted.
I got the same results when I tried to install a 32 bit version of Windows using Windows 10 version 2004 x86 -- Win10_2004_English_x32.iso

-I began reading through two issues on the Rufus forums. I didn't finish reading through these yet, but I think they might lead to more clues. Issue615 and Issue 1213. Both of these relate to some particular issue within the HP family.

-I was able to completely install Ubuntu onto the laptop's hard drive! Within this operating system, I tried using wine and winetricks in the terminal to run the same "setup.exe" from the USB that I ran in command prompt earlier, but I kept receiving the following error:

err:module:import_dll Loading library MFC42.DLL which is needed by L"Path" failed error c000007b.

err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"Path" failed, status c0000135


-I was also able to completely install FreeDos, but I couldn't figure out a way to navigate to the directory of the USB Installation media.


-Honestly, the only thing I can think of that I haven't done yet is burn the ISO onto a DVD instead of a USB, but I can't think of why this would make a difference.

:)

 

Windows 10 USB boot

Hi there, am not a windows 10 expert. I have a pc in the bedroom on windows 10, I messed up the bootloader trying to fix the xp on that system.

System wont boot, trying to repair via win 10 usb installer.

Downloaded the media creation tool to install windows 10 installer on usb stick. Not compatible with a host of usb sticks I have. Tried the usb sticks that others use, but I think they use rufus; as the media creation tool by win 10 does not detect the usb stick.

So quick question, the win10 machine i am trying to repair the bootloader is a win7 upgraded to win10.
If i were to use the usb win10 installer to "repair installation" does the version of the iso downloaded via the media creation tool matter?

There is three options:
Windows 10
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 N

Also is there a step by step instead of using rufus as I want to try an alternative method of creating a usb win 10 installer. Preferably with more compatibility.

System is a asus sabertooth 990 (r2?) with AMD phenom X 6.

Also is there any other software I can load onto the usb that can repair the bootloader easily?
That would be the ideal alternative. Thanks

 

Windows 10 restart loop

Hi,

To understand the issue better, I would like to ask some questions:

• What is the make and model of your computer?
• Do you get any error message?

I suggest you to follow the steps provided by Andre Da Costa from the link provided below and check if it helps.

Windows 10 Restart loop

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on the status for further assistance.

 

Windows 10 restart loop

Hi,

As you are experiencing restart loop in Windows 10, I suggest you to follow the steps provided by
Ramesh.Kumar from the link provided below and check if it helps.

Windows 10 restart loop- can't fix

Keep us posted on the status for further assistance.