I got home from college for thanksgiving break to find that my dad has been on my pc, plugged in 2 external storage devices and disabled my antivirus. not sure exactly what caused my current issues but i feel like it might have something to do with that. It bluescreened on startup multiple times, then i finally made it to the sign in screen where it bluescreened many more times, when i finally got to my desktop i couldn’t use taskbar or search, or open any programs besides file explorer. it seems to just blue screen randomly, always giving an error message related to system 32. i don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to try to outright fix it, so im opting for a factory reset. I’m choosing to wipe everything and do a new cloud install of windows. since the process of resetting takes a while, my pc bluescreens at some point in the middle, which blocks me from even factory resetting.
I’ve run a system scan through command prompt and it says: “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.”
i can post any logs needed, just let me know where to find them.
anything valuable has been backed up and i don’t have anything saved on my pc i care about losing. i just want it to be usable, any help would be appreciated.
The Factory Reset feature in Windows 10 and 11 is very very flawed and is not recommended by /r/techsupport. Do not use this feature.
It often breaks with “user profile” errors or being stuck on a blue loading screen. This is because PCs load software differently than phones or tablets. Instead of a reset, Windows on a PC can be reinstalled with a Windows install USB drive. You can make this yourself.
You will need:
Use the Media Creation Tool to create a Windows install USB drive. Disconnect all other USB drives from the computer first, and be very careful which drive letter you select (use File Explorer to confirm) then follow the prompts in the app.
You will need to start or “boot” your computer from the USB drive. The menu may show a message with the button to press, otherwise try the F2, F10, F11, or Del keys. The USB drive should be listed.
We have a full guide for reinstall Windows on our wiki here.
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