RayLopez99 wrote:
I want to report an interesting event in my PC upgrade. Target machine was a Aspire, AMD A6 laptop running Windows 8.1, 32 bit mode, that I upgraded to Windows 10, 64x.

When Windows 10 came out in 2015 or so, I upgraded for free immediately, then, went back to Windows 8.1 but not before backing up the Windows 10 using Macrium. Then I forgot about this laptop, which is my girlfriend's anyway and she hardly uses it (preferring her smart phone).

I decided today to upgrade it back to Windows 10. So I used a USB hard drive to restore the Macrium image file from several years ago. Much to my disappointment, for unknown reasons, though I had plenty of HD space, the Macrium program said (something like): 'no more space on target' and exited with an error.

I tried to reboot to see if I could at least get Windows 8.1 and I got a blank screen. I waited a long time, even several hours, tried numerous things with the BIOS and still no luck. I even left it on overnight (by mistake) and still BSOD. The only thing I did not do is "load defaults" in BIOS but my settings were very generic, I checked them several times.

I decided to have to rebuy Windows 10. I found (I'm in the Philippines now) a cheap $10 version of Windows 10, proving Microsoft charges different prices depending on where you point of sale is, which I think is interesting, as Amazon (US) had a $99 price.

So I decided to use the Youtube tutorial below at [1] to use Rufus to load a Windows 10 ISO onto a USB stick, since this laptop has no CD/DVD. All was going well, I got Windows 10 loaded onto the USB following the tutorial below, after getting Windows 10 ISO downloaded from the Microsoft site.

Anyway, when I rebooted to USB, setting it to "UEFI" rather than "Legacy" (as Windows 10 apparently demands), I got a message that said (something like): "cannot boot to USB due to the security settings on this PC"

Again I played around with BIOS, setting UEFI to "Legacy" but nothing worked, blank screen, but no error message except 'Press any key, no bootable device found'. I tried booting another Windows 10 PC from the USB stick, and it recognized the stick. I checked the laptop USB ports and they had worked in the past (and, after fixing the problem as I explain below, they work now).

Out of desperation I simply left the PC on and unplugged the USB, after setting BIOS to 'default' settings. Then, after 10 minutes, I got a screen...and it was Windows 10 from several years ago! What a shock! Apparently the Macrium *did* restore the Windows 10 image file, despite the error, and apparently the Aspire laptop has a hidden file somewhere on the boot sector or otherwise that prevents anybody from booting to a USB stick?! I had set no security settings in the BIOS. The failure to boot from USB raises the question on how you would 'wipe clean' a HD to load another OS on it, say Linux, but I guess you can use that freeware "nuke" program from within Windows itself to reformat your HD? I don't care, as my problem is solved, but I'm just curious.

All's well that ends well, but it was bizarre. I've built many a PC from scratch back in the days but nowadays there's so many little tricks like this I wouldn't bother, I'd rather take it to Flasherly (or his equivalent here in PH) and I was going to do that just before the solution miraculously appeared.

RL

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJCkI14Lcd4 Windows 10 using USB stick


You didn't have to spend a dime to fix this.

You should have asked over in "alt.comp.os.windows-10".

That group is not available in Google Groups, so you'd
need to use a real USENET server (like the free and open
AIOE server).

First of all, there's hardly a reason to use Windows 10.
It's too bossy. The last upgrade (1809), deleted user data,
using deletion that could only be recovered with Recuva
or Photorec (only accessing your backup image guarantees
any sort of recovery, and who makes backups?).

Windows 8.1, at least here, has elements of stability.

You're not missing anything running Windows 10. I have
both, and I can compare them.

*******

Once you install and activate Windows 10 on a device,
the Microsoft license server has a record of that. You
can reinstall at any time later, and as long as the
hardware hash is still valid (it's the same computer),
the OS will activate again. There is no need to extract
or re-enter license keys for such an operation. Activation
is automatic, no user intervention needed.

When it asks for a key, say "I don't have one" and... move on.
It will be activated when you finish.

Entering a license key from a purchased source, is for
computers which have "never seen an OS". If you were
a System Builder, putting together a PC from a pile of
trash, that's when you'd buy a key of some sort.

*******

The Win10 boot procedure will try three times to boot.
Each time, it tries a different procedure to recover
the OS. Once it's tried three times, you could enter
the Troubleshooting screen and access the Command Prompt
and have a look around to satisfy yourself as to the
level of damage present.

Macrium Reflect emergency CD, has a menu item for
"boot repair". Use it!

Note that the three pass Microsoft recovery scheme
is pretty poor. Just the other day, I got an
"inaccessible boot device" error. Now, I know exactly
how it happened. It's an IDE versus AHCI driver problem.
Windows 10 is too stupid to re-arm the storage drivers,
and try all the drivers until the OS boots. Macrium
Reflect limits its manipulations to the BCD file.
Macrium is *not* a Microsoft Help Desk. What Macrium
repairs, is the stuff that Macrium *might* have damaged
while you were doing a backup. For example, if you
do a partition restore and not a whole-disk restore,
the boot info would be missing. The Macrium boot
repair (only available on the CD), would attempt
to fix up such a mess.

To fix "inaccessible boot device", you need to set
the StartOverride key to 0 from the regular value
of 3. When I tried this on 1803, it didn't work,
which means the damn recipe has changed again.

I had to use an old bounce technique to quickly
get it running again. It just means moving the
drive to another kind of storage port. I used
a SATA to IDE adapter for the SATA SSD and plugged
it into the IDE cable, and Windows 10 booted right
up. Then, I could go into Device Manager and delete
the two Code 10 entries so Windows would rediscover
the SATA ports that were using the wrong driver.
Then, when I moved the SSD back to a SATA port,
it worked again.

I have also tested in Windows 10, the removal of the
ENUM key in CurrentControlSet, and Windows 10 survived
that and booted up while re-discovering all the hardware.
The Kaspersky rescue CD (the one that scans for viruses),
now has a Registry Editor on it, and using that, you
can delete the ENUM key. To do it from Windows, would
have been a pain-in-the-ass to remove the permissions
issues. This is the same technique we used in Win2K and
WinXP days. Still works.

*******

Summary: You didn't need to buy a license key.

Win10 Media can be downloaded for free, with no
proof of purchase necessary. If you visit the
download page with Linux or WinXP (i.e. OSes that
don't support MediaCreationTool and its taste in
.NET runtime libraries), Microsoft will give you
a direct link to a 3.5 or 4.5GB ISO download.

The only reason to install Win10 is if you need
a Pooh Emoji for some reason :-/ There is hardly anything
practical in there that Win8.1 would not have.

Win10 is more crash-prone than previous OSes. I've
had more trouble with resource starvation and "killing
processes in time before it's too late". They've added
bucketloads of "features", for which the interactions
are not well understood. In WinXP, Task Manager is your
friend and is "a boss". In Win10, Task Manager is a wimp
and falls over like all your other applications do. This
means your OS can freeze up, before you can do anything
about it.

Paul