I'll be buying a new computer...

[zedd151]

Is that the laptop with the N5100 CPU? That's an Intel Celeron running at 1.1GHz 

N5105.

But all require to be done from within windows

Safe mode?

That was one of the first things I had tried, I cannot even get the boot options to come up to do that.

[zedd151]

My sister wanted to help me 'fix' it. 
She gets into the BIOS... she runs through the house, "Larry, Larry, come and see what I found!" 

I just let her tinker around in there. No harm in that, she can't break what's already broken. 

With some blind luck, she might get it to do something that would help to either boot something, or somehow get into safe mode, preferably the command prompt.    I have tried all logical (illogical, too) ways to try to do both. Me, I am 100% finished with it. I'll take my losses.

Signed, Captain of a Boat Anchor. 

The "I'll be buying a new computer" saga continues...

[zedd151]

Well, golly! Color me stupid. My sister suggested gaetting a hold of a copy of Windows 11 directly from Microsoft... She downloaded the ISO file.. and copied the ISO file to an external hard drive. Not the proper way to install from it, mind you. I let her proceed. Of course it kept booting into the already installed version of Windows 11. She kept trying. No luck.

So I told her that the ISO file needs to be extracted, and the drive marked as a boot drive. She let me handle it from there. 

So, I formatted the drive after copying the ISO to another drive. I extracted the ISO file, and made the external drive bootable and checked that the BCD store was configured properly. After checking that all was in order, I set the drive as bootable and active.

After plugging in the external drive, somehow she had gotten to the BIOS boot menu.    I told her which entry to click on... voila! Windows 11 fresh install in progress.... ... ... ... 

Will finish the installation, and see what happens.... .... .... I might have to undo anything that was changed in the BIOS. But so far, no issues.

[zedd151]

Tadaa! Success at last.
Finally able to log on my brand new laptop.    through trial and error and a smidgeon of dumb luck..

So, I have to assume that something was a bit 'off' with the installation of Windows 11 that came with the laptop, or somehow corrupted update files?    At any rate, all is well in zedd-land.   

[NoCforMe]

Any idea what settings or execution paths resulted in your success? That might be good stuff for people to know.

[zedd151]

Unfortunately all is not well, just yet.
I had no audio drivers. So, looking in Windows update, there was a driver listed that looked like it could be the audio driver. I let it update and install. Now a different BSOD, but not immediately. Only appears after several minutes. But always appears. Tried rolling back with system restore. No joy.
Now I am once again attempting a fresh install...

This time though, I repartitioned the hard drive by splitting the Windows 11 partition in half. I am using half for a new Windows 11 install, which I will not update anything manually this time. Even if it means no audio for now.

On the second partition, I plan on trying Windows 7 first. If no joy, then Windows 10. I really have no hopes that Windows 11 will work as it should. 

But... at least I can get partially there.

[zedd151]

okay, this is round 3! 

disabled Secure Boot, or safeboot, whatever its called, in the BIOS.
when the install is asking for 'country' press shift+F10 to get command prompt.
type in 'oobe\bypassnro' in the command prompt, and pess enter. the computer will reboot and continue installation from where it left off at.
these are suggestions from various sites, btw.

this above, disables needing microsoft account during installation, and enables continuing setup without internet connection. i did not have those options previously.

So far so good.
i aint touching anything else, if it aint necessary. 

later today, or maybe tomorrow, i will try windows 7 on the spare partition. if that is a no go, will try windows 10 there. those for just in case the next update fubars windows 11. if neither windows 10 or 7 dont work, probably linux.   

[NoCforMe]

Keep plugging away. Don't give up until you've seen the whites of their ... logon dialog.

[zedd151]

After an hour on this thing, no apparent issues, aside from some missing drivers that is.
No more login dialogs, when I start the laptop, it automatically logs me in now, no Microsoft login, no password or PIN number needed, unlike the way it was before. Yippee.

Later I will use a 3rd party tool to locate the drivers that are missing... hopefully that won't fubar the laptop again. I'll back it up first, to be safe.

[C3]

okay, this is round 3! 

disabled Secure Boot, or safeboot, whatever its called, in the BIOS.
when the install is asking for 'country' press shift+F10 to get command prompt.
type in 'oobe\bypassnro' in the command prompt, and pess enter. the computer will reboot and continue installation from where it left off at.
these are suggestions from various sites, btw.

this above, disables needing microsoft account during installation, and enables continuing setup without internet connection. i did not have those options previously.

So far so good.
i aint touching anything else, if it aint necessary. 

later today, or maybe tomorrow, i will try windows 7 on the spare partition. if that is a no go, will try windows 10 there. those for just in case the next update fubars windows 11. if neither windows 10 or 7 dont work, probably linux. 

Linux is nice, macOS is nice, even BSD *nix'es are nice. But theres nothing like a MASM with bare metal Windows on a PC.

[NoCforMe]

Linux is nice, macOS is nice, even BSD *nix'es are nice. But theres nothing like a MASM with bare metal Windows on a PC.

I love the smell of an overheated CPU in the morning ...

[zedd151]

I love the smell of an overheated CPU in the morning ...

... it smells like success.

Or something like that.  you gotta say the whole line.
I don't rate the current status of this laptop as a success, though.

I am attempting a backup of the laptop, in its current state. Seems like "Antimalware Service Executable" is working overtime inspecting what that program is doing. After a couple hours, at this pace, the backup should be done.

I am not going to install anything else on here, until I know for sure it will run and stability will persist through the next round of updates. I have only installed opera browser for now. Any programming related stuff will have to wait. I would hate to be in the middle of a coding session, and get the dreaded BSOD before I can save the file being worked on.
One of the last BSOD's had occurred when I was making a posting here about the progress during the troubleshooting stage, just before that last installation attempt. Was a rather lengthy post, and I don't remember half of it.

[NoCforMe]

One of the last BSOD's had occurred when I was making a posting here about the progress during the troubleshooting stage, just before that last installation attempt. Was a rather lengthy post, and I don't remember half of it.

I hate when that happens. Like trying to remember a dream after waking up ...

[zedd151]

Hi. After letting Windows 11 run all of its updates, everything is still fine. There are however still 9 outstanding drivers, including audio. I have decided to disable all of those in Device Manager, since not even a couple 3rd party tools could also not find the missing drivers. The fact that this computer is brand new, means that the driver tools do not yet have these missing drivers in their database, it would seem.

The computer is running fine, no apparent issues because of the missing drivers. I did install a few pieces of software, like 7zip, opera browser, the two driver tools (driver genius and driver max), will be putting the masm32 and 64 SDKs in later, plus some other necessities. All in all, seems to be going smoothly after all that had occurred. 

For audio, I have a Bluetooth speaker, that has its own internals for the digital to audio conversion (it doesn't need Windows drivers), and so far it works well.    As a plus, it's cordless. (Unless being charged via USB)
So, you won't be hearing any more whining from me in the near future about this laptop. 

[daydreamer]

One of the last BSOD's had occurred when I was making a posting here about the progress during the troubleshooting stage, just before that last installation attempt. Was a rather lengthy post, and I don't remember half of it.

I hate when that happens. Like trying to remember a dream after waking up ...

if it was my kinda worst nightmare falling from high heights,id be happy forget such dreams :)
Awake hours with fear of heights are enough for me :(