5 replies to this topic

[wwwlaurel]

Hi Guys,

After several months of prompts about my being eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 10, I went ahead with it. Knowing full well that I am not by any means an expert on such things I was cautious but assumed it mustn't be too complicated if they were promoting it such.

Upon starting the upgrade, it gave no indication of how long it was projected to take nor of any participation necessary on my part so once it seemed to be underway I was totally unattentive to it for quite some time. (As a matter of fact I think I went out to do the grocery shopping or something). When I got back it appeared to be asleep, or that the screen had timed out so I jiggled the mouse to see how it was coming and all I got was a back-lit black screen. Then I tried to bring up the task manager by hitting ctrl/alt/del and no response. Becoming concerned, I did a hard shut-down by holding the on/off switch until it powered off. Powered it back on and was pleased to see a new little white skewed Windows icon with a dotted spinner in the bottom center of my screen. But the spinner went on and on and finally the screen changed to a brief back-lit black screen with a cursor in the far uppert left corner followed by a blank back-lit black screen. Thinking maybe there was a process going on and I should be patient, I was, but even hours later there was no change except that it went to sleep but was unresponsive upon awakening other than that blank screen. Several hard reboots brought the same result.

So I started digging around and was relieved to find a multitude of others with apparently the same problem and an answer (from guru3d I think) that recommended an ISO download issued by Microsoft.

At this point, feeling out of my league, I asked my roommate, who's generally better with these things than I due only to more experience, to try to help.

He tried, did not succeed, and I'm not sure what all he tried but all that changed was that now a little "warm-up jiggle" is audible before the blank black screen appears - and the computer is once again unresponsive. Did I just create an expensive brick or is this remediable?

My computer is an HP Touchsmart tm2 Notebook, with Intel Core Duo and ATI Radeon and was running Windows 7 Home Premium that I believe was fully up-to-date (and due to space issues uses an external HP DVD drive that connects through a USB port).

Thanks in advance for your help, you guys are the greatest!!

PS: I did try pushing f8 on start-up but that didn't bring any other result either

Edited by wwwlaurel, 03 November 2015 - 11:03 AM.

[Ztruker]

Read through this tutorial and see if you can get back to your previous OS: How to Go Back to the Previous Windows from Windows 10
 

[wwwlaurel]

I would love to try this but I haven'y been able to get anything other than the black screen result - no safe mode, no boot menu or options, nothing. It literally flashes the HP screen for less than a second and the blue screen with the Windows icon and the dotted spinner comes on for about 2 minutes (at which point I hit F8 hoping to get a Safe Mode or any Windows response to no avail and then the back-lit black screen with a cursor that only shows for 10 or 15 seconds and finally the fully black screen. At no time do I get any other options or gain access to anything in the computer.  

[paws]

If you are trying to boot to safe mode then you need to start tapping F8 IMMEDIATELY after pushing the power on button.... you must not wait at all. Tap the F8 key regularly once per second, give it at least 15 taps before starting over... this may or may not do the trick, if it doesn't work then repeat the procedure but first you need to take some additional steps;

 

1 Remove the power cord from the wall socket ( pull out its plug)

2 Remove the battery from the underside of the computer ( keep it somewhere dafe)

3 press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds and then release it

4 repeat step 3 but only hold it down for 5 seconds before releasing it.

5 repeat step 4

6 (The above should completely discharge the internal capacitors)

7 Replace battery and lock into place

8 Replace power cord into wall socket

9 try to start your computer by f8 procedure (immediately start tapping F8 after pushing the power on button (a one or two second push is all that is required.)

 

If you have  tried this method without success then maybe its time to try starting your computer by booting from the recovery discs you made when the machine was first used with win 7 on it.

 

Try connecting your external  opticaldrive (USB CD/DVD) with the Recovery disc in the tray ( it is best to use the internal CD/DVD if possible for this but some of these machines were originally shipped without one being fitted)

 

See if you can boot from it ( you may need to get into the BIOS to set boot priority to try the USB CD/DVD drive as priority one boot device, with the hard drive0 as second, save the changes and exit, restart and you may just be lucky and be able to boot from the CD/DVD

 To get into the BIOS its tap once per second the Esc key until a menu appears....( that menu may help) otherwise continue by pressing F11 and that should take you to the BIOS.

 

As you can appreciate switching from win 7 to win 10 involves a fundamental and massive change to your computer...including a huge download of data ( >3Gb) and the installation of a completely new operating system that is different from the Win 7..... a lot of folks have no trouble, but unfortunately some do and its then that they take on board the wisdom of having made a good disc image verified it and kept several copies safe offsite with a method of booting the computer in the event that the Windows will not start correctly.

 

Try the above steps, see if you can find all your discs and images ( and whilst doing so check your back ups are all complete contain everything you need ( stuff you wouldn't want to lose) and are reproducible and with copies on removable media kept safe offsite...

 

Let us know how you get on and one of us will then guide you through the next steps..

 

Regards

paws

[terry1966]

 

If you are trying to boot to safe mode then you need to start tapping F8 IMMEDIATELY after pushing the power on button.... you must not wait at all. Tap the F8 key regularly once per second, give it at least 15 taps before starting over... this may or may not do the trick, if it doesn't work then repeat the procedure but first you need to take some additional steps;

i have heard that just holding down the f8 key and then hitting the power on button (still holding down F8 until the menu appears.) is a way to bypass quick boot and get to the menu, of course if it gets to the black screen of windows and not the menu options then it never worked.

 

[paws]

Yep Terry's advice (as always) is spot on!