I'll be buying a new computer...

[zedd151]

... You only need find where O.S. it is or reinstall O.S. in last case.
If it does not work, grab the scapulars, talismans and amulets and pray a lot.

I've tried everything I could think of,  even downloading the win 10 ISO from dell.  While attempting to install,  it kept asking for drivers without naming them.  I'm at wits end here.  My next step is to call Dell for tech help.

[aw27]

For my last notebook I installed Windows 10 from a bootable USB stick created with the Media Creation Tool. If your hard drive is not broken it will definitely install.

[zedd151]

For my last notebook I installed Windows 10 from a bootable USB stick created with the Media Creation Tool. If your hard drive is not broken it will definitely install.

Why would that be  any different than installing from DVD??

Anyway,  I have @active bootdisk which runs on windows 10 winpe.  I have successfully reformatted the HD using diskpart following instructions for uefi disks from Microsoft.  Still no luck. Temporarily using winpe as general purpose is wouldn't be bad but no wow64 32 bit support.  So any programs I try to run from winpe that are not native 64 bit simply won't run.  So any tools I use to help fix my problem have to really be 64 bit compatible without relying on wow64 32 bit support. 


The last and final option I have is taking the HD from this computer and installing it into the HD-less laptop I got from a buddy a couple weeks back. It could be some other kind of hardware issue with the Dell netbook. In theory if I still cannot install to the other laptop,  then the HD must be the problem.  Of course it could be the install medium.  If I can't install to the other laptop with this HD,  I'll reburn the ISO and try again. But I really think windows setup would complain if the install disk was corrupt.

[aw27]

Why would that be  any different than installing from DVD??

I though the notebook had no DVD drive. Of course, you can use an external DVD drive.
Still, why do you need an ISO from Dell. To install Dell crapware?

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

I doubt if the warranty will cover my own mishap.

   Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  If the place you bought it
is easy to get to, give it a try.

Steve

[zedd151]

   Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  If the place you bought it
is easy to get to, give it a try.

Steve

Thanks FORTRANS, but unfortunately I had thrown away the receipt.  Otherwise that would not have been a bad idea.

To add:
I will look into removing the HD from the new computer after I return from some errands .
Installing into the older laptop shouldn't pose any difficulties, the new one however has no access panel. Disassemble required.

[zedd151]

The other thing I was pondering was to install Ubuntu or some other flavor of Linux and running my windows software from wine.
I'll be further exploring my options in the coming days.  I could probably pick up another new network relatively cheaply as I had this one. Then I can canibalize this one for parts (HD,  memory, wireless card)  Or even purchasing the exact same model, imaging the disk before I even run it,  then applying that image to this HD.  Should be no trouble getting it reactivated with original keys. At least it sounds good in theory.

Later....
Nevermind what I said about having the install ISO from Dell. It was a micros++t ISO.  So possibly,  there is a driver missing in the ms ISO. So as of now, I am downloading the Dell ISO from their site.   Keeping my fingers crossed this time.   

>>> 23 minutes in and 1.9 GB so far...

[mineiro]

Dell have a good feedback, try that my brother.
I have solved a lot of windows errors from Linus, another choice.
The hard point is that images. My drivers (I live on a 3rd world) are cheap from yours, this is relevant. Who seels to me don't sell to you, this is about images, well, sorry, this is about mentality about regions. I'm talking about exokernel and about. Take your windows hard disk and install on another computer and you will know what I'm talking about, failure; but, on linux side ok depending of your distro or ... .
The problem is easy to solve, keep walking my brother, believe in me. I faced this a lot, gain a lot of money, ... . Only clock work for free?
Other words, iso images have a default driver images, don't have specific images. Create your own iso image, don't download that. Of couse, from microsoft ok.
Be in peace.

[daydreamer]

well if you go the Linux way,linux comes with lots of Tools to play with as programmer,even apache webserver
good luck

[zedd151]

After all the trouble these last few days, I finally got the damn thing fixed.  Turns out that somehow the uefi boot partition got corrupted, so I followed a tutorial for copying the 'BCD store' from the windows partition to the boot partition. And YEAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for everyone that stopped in with their suggestions...

Now I will make a backup of the entire disk, including ALL of the partitions

[aw27]

You have all the reason to be happy, at least until you are forced to upgrade to version 1803 ("Redstone 5") which will chop 4 GB out of your small hard drive.  :t

[hutch--]

Something I have noticed with Win10 64 Professional, every since the last major upgrade, the available disk space on my boot partition has increased by about 30 gigabytes. I have seen the free space go as low as 85 gigabytes, correctly its showing about 120 gigabytes which is the best for a long time. It seems you get less of the mountain of chyte remaining than it used to be. I use a standard Windows utility called Disk Cleaner which removes some of their junk but of late there is little to remove.

I did not buy this Intel PCIe x 4 SSD to have it loaded full of Microsoft chyte, it used to have some massive mountain of crap for the Microsoft store that you could not routinely delete but that seems to have faded away.

[aw27]

Disk Cleaner is great to remove the Windows.Old folder and get back a few tens of GB.
Still, drive C keeps filling up even after I moved My Documents, Temp and My Downloads to another drive. I believe this is an inevitable Law of Physics.

[zedd151]

As it stands at the moment, I have 7.5 GB free space on the hard drive and that is with pagefile and hibernation both turned off. Also I uninstalled most MS office products, as I rarely use those. I am looking into making some of the programs I use "portable" with Portable Apps, or similar. 

I have a 64 GB SD card at the moment to hold the stuff that I'd rather not clutter up the C: drive with.

After the last couple of days, I am just so grateful to have the computer back in running condition - that I will accept what I have now.   

[felipe]

Good to know that it was just a temporary disgrace. Welcome back