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Old January 20th, 2016, 02:42 AM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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Exclamation how do you unlock a HDD to reinstall Windows 10

I need to either reset my son's computer or reinstall Windows 10. During a resent update it crashed and will not load up at all. I have tried everything to restart the computer. But when I try it tells me I need to unlock the hard drive first. well I cannot access anything on the pc because it will not load to Windows even in the trouble shooter program. So how do i reinstall windows 10 if i cant unlock the HDD?
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Old January 21st, 2016, 04:14 AM
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Murf Murf is offline
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Do you have a Windows 8 DVD? Or maybe a USB with the repair on it, that was made?

Appears the Master Boot Record is corrupt.

Also reboot and immediately start tapping "F8" may work and bring a menu up.

The other computer you have access too, what version of windows? Windows 8 maybe?
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Old January 21st, 2016, 08:08 PM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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I tried the disk already and I also downloaded Windows 10 on a USB. same results. it did say inaccesible boot device. My pc is a windows8.1.
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Old January 21st, 2016, 08:10 PM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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I will try using f8. thanks for responding Murf.@
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Old January 21st, 2016, 08:15 PM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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Tried f8. it did not bring anything up except to the automatic repair screen. which I have already tried all options. still tells me drive is locked.
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Old January 21st, 2016, 08:37 PM
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Murf Murf is offline
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inaccesible boot device?

Did you change the boot order in SETUP to USB as the 1st One?

If Windows 8 or 8.1 BCD (Boot Configuration Data) becomes corrupt after a
crash, power outage or some other reason, you'll encounter the "The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again" and "Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing." errors while refreshing or resetting Windows 8 or 8.1 installation, and error code 0xc000000e

You must boot it into the Recovery Environment which needs to be made, do you have access to another computer with Windows 8 on it? If so then:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...-refresh-media


Then follow this Booting to Recovery Environment with Windows 8/8.1...............
https://www.winhelp.us/repair-your-c...html#repairdvd
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Old January 21st, 2016, 10:21 PM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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yes I changed the boot to usb.it would start but would say before it can continue you need to pull it out and restart to windows. Which I can't do. Yes I have acess to my windows 8 computer. I will give it a try.

Last edited by icsd71; January 21st, 2016 at 11:19 PM.
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Old January 23rd, 2016, 02:11 AM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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I have tried twice now to down load the Windows 8 info from your link. Each time it got to about 70% downloaded and just stopped down loading and disappeared. So I am not sure what is going on there?
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Old January 23rd, 2016, 08:36 PM
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Murf Murf is offline
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Try this one:
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/feature...dows-xp-649811
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  #10  
Old January 25th, 2016, 06:45 PM
icsd71 icsd71 is offline
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this link worked. for to where it is requiring the Windows key. I don't have it. the system came with Windows 10 on it and it is saved on the computer. I am trying to find a way I can access it find the key from the seller or if Microsoft can help me get it. It didn't have a slip this button or a I don't have a key option.
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  #11  
Old January 25th, 2016, 08:24 PM
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Murf Murf is offline
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If you bought a new PC running Windows 10, the product key will be pre–installed on your PC and your PC will automatically be activated, included with the packaging the PC came in, or included on the Certificate of Authenticity (COA) attached to the PC.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

OEM PCs store and encrypt the product key in the UEFI firmware chip. The product key is no longer on a COA sticker to help prevent theft. When you reset or install Windows 10, the product key will automatically be detected from the UEFI firmware chip, and will be used to activate.

If you upgraded to the free upgrade of Windows 10 from an activated Windows 7 or 8.1 PC, then you will not have a product key. Instead, the PC gets registered on Microsoft activation servers with a digital entitlement that will always be used to activate Windows 10 on that PC
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Old March 11th, 2016, 04:52 PM
RzzRBladez RzzRBladez is offline
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Exclamation If not you maybe someone else, though you made me write it.

Hellow,


This became far longer than I intended, and it is and most likely will always remain incomplete, but it is not unworkable, and I give some hints, to be safe instead of sorry, I took the liberty to explain it to a person who could have been me, prior to 15 November 2015 (release November update), simply because I cannot know what someone else knows and I wanted to write this not for only the person who came here for help, but for anyone with any experience level, with a problem that looks like the one I had, since we have not yet established that the thread-starter has the same problem, though if he has the same problem, I will tell you ahead it is easily fixed, easier than you suspect, yet only if it is the same.


I am scouting for hints on what is wrong with my way of installing Win 10, since it always degrades, only reset or re-install will help, though I found out that my UEFI Firmware claims that the Boot manager of WIN 10 is unsigned, if I follow the rulebook, but that is not why I registered, I simply saw something familiar.

My computers, both have 1 SSD and one standard HDD, on one of them I had the issue that after a crash I could not do much, but the command prompt, since both drives were locked. I later found out that that was not really the case, non of my drives or partitions were locked.

I had only ever used command prompt once to do the very helpful trick of: "Powercfg /h off" to utterly kill me some more SSD room. I have the tendency to not see entire parts of phrases, jumble up words and think that I actually wrote more than I did, called dyslexia, which makes that black thingie one may see pop up so now and then an evil square of likely doom.

That is why I registered so I might help you, or anyone else with this issue, since it so much resembles what I had when it is still an issue or for when it returns. My other computer has a 128 GB SSD with two OS's in dual boot, since I love Linux and hate WINDOWS, yet I have 3D CAD especially made for the latter. To not waste the SSD with an unnecessary amount of the OEM installation, the partition was made on the HDD, and to facilitate the installation the HDD was created as DISK 0 and the SSD as DISK 1, sometimes when a computer crashes the windows system will re-assign drive letters, since everything on a disk is quite well fixed, whether it is GPT or MBR, except for the most important thing, the driveletters this accident can happen more often. Windows will likely reassign drive letters starting with C:\ on the the first non-special and hidden partitions of Disk 0, which in my case thus entirely missed all functionality.

the first non hidden "normal partition" was what actually used to be my D: Data. since in GPT the system partition is a hidden partition called EFI and the Boot partition is drive C:\ the first thing one must find out is that it sort of used to be in MBR: First there is BIOS then There will follow BOOT, via a bootloader and then the system will start running, nowadays in UEFI after EFI (slowly replacing all forms of BIOS), the boot sequence is passed to a Boot partition called EFI (a partition usually somewhere in the beginning of a drive, likely the same drive as the last installed (modern) Windows installation. That partition is somewhere between say 50 MB very small and up to possibly 1.5 GB, depending on a lot of factors, like the bigger the partition is, the more reserve space must be added.

This little system partition is until Windows OS is actually running, the partition that goes by the name C:\, which has as nasty consequence that if UEFI is looking for C:\ it cannot find anything on DISK 0 when it should be looking on DISK 1. UEFI thus cannot read DISK 0 and pass on its duties to the Bootmanager (bootmngr.efi). And so is a little bump in the road reason for UEFI to claim that your disks have been locked, while in fact they may not be locked at all, maybe there is actually nothing really going on.

One solution is any Windows installation disc with the possibility to run the command prompt before loading, so I guess from win 7 sp1 and newer will do, and then simply renaming the partitions as they used to be named.

If you are not accustomed to using the command prompt, as I was till November 15th the fateful update for every computer with a win 8 product key, like mine. there are a number of checks I always love to do, in the command prompt using diskpart, the command: detail, this command should be followed by "Disk" or "Vdisk", or "part", or "Volume" after typing Diskpart the command Detail may very well be the most important command in the command prompt, since it will help you by analyzing what partition you are at that very moment holding as a hostage.

Soldiers say, when in doubt, empty your magazine,

well when in doubt, type "Detail part" when you are in doubt it will neither help you, nor your computer. Diskpart will commit your command at that part, or disk, or volume, or Vdisk (vitualdisk) you have selected, and some commands automatically select parts or other devices, without telling you so. So before committing to a command type Detail .......... and be sure.

in diskpart there are a number of commands one can find by /? or typing HELP, well typing DIR will do the same. Some of these commands are very powerful: clean <enter> will wipe anything you have selected entirely clean.

If this happens for any reason, do not worry, you have lost noting, you simply need to exit the command prompt and shutdown the computer. go to another computer and Download Minitool Bootable Partition manager

http://www.partitionwizard.com/parti...otable-cd.html

It can easily reestablish any partition, from a pre-OS environment based on linux. and when you lost everything due to destroying a partition, nothing on that partition has been marked as deleted, thus bringing back the partition will make all info readable again. unless it was already damaged before your little accident. Burn this ISO to a CD or DVD, and boot from that disc, it will take some loading time, in a black screen, but soon you will be guided to the partition manager. Look for the wizard partition recovery and click it, it will guide you along the way, do not rush your decisions, first try a quick scan and then a more thorough one, since some computers have still visible older partitions overlaying eachother, and it is always nice to stay relaxed and by analyzing the sitiuation make the right decision the first time, if you by accident made the wrong choice just delete the partition again (if prompted for a quick delete ALWAYS YES, (slow deletes are meant to destroy more than only the partition) and run the recovery wizard. Thus: WHEN IN DOUBT TYPE "DETAIL DISK", OR "DETAIL PART", OR "DETAIL VOLUME"!!!!!!!



I do not think It will help you right now to make a restore point, now would it? But if you really need to be save, the pictures of the last birthday of your son are still on that computer, or the letter you were typing to a long lost friend (anything you cannot simply download, or ask someone else to redo) is reason to download Ubuntu, or Mint cinnamon, or any of the Ubuntu family Linux OS's. Personally I think Ubuntu has the looks, but Mint Cinnamon works sweeter, and their forum is a lovely green, the kind that makes you optimistic. Download: Universal USB installer as well, go to Youtube and search Universal USB Installer and go watch that video. When you have linux on a USB, go into your BIOS (UEFI), directly after hitting the power button, by tapping rapidly a key from your keyboard, in my case that would be Delete (MSI Laptop) but different vendors different keys, it may be f12, or f2 or first find your manufacturer in this list:

http://www.cpucare.net/Hardware/BIOS/Access_BIOS.htm

If it may be the case that you have no clue where you saved what, than it may be advisable to download Ruphus, to make a bootable MSDOS USB, or a FAT32 USB, or to chose MBR or GPT, or a combination and use it to boot any program you are familiar with that can effectively look up and copy everything that makes your relation with your spouse a happy one, for not destroying the wedding video. However, if you boot into Linux Mint, you will very soon notice that you can simply open a wizard to attach the computer to the wireless, and scout for solutions on the Internet, while Linux can easily read most filesystems, including the one with Windows on it, all you need is either the wireless password, or a general idea where the wireless-profile is stored on the C drive, and open that .TXT file, or .XML file. There are more ways to get that computer going again, the thing is that a full power down may restore back the faulty drive letter assignment, as soon as you have confirmed that your problem is simply the drive letters as it was with my computer, never shut down the computer, but restart it, until you have actually seen windows operate again. When you do arrive in windows it is very well possible that a number of tiny partitions have been damaged, and/or that what makes them tick is damaged, it is a good thing to at least keep windows operating a while, when you do run some simple diagnostics, EFI is a rather important partition since it controls all OS's installed, it may be advisable to assign a temporary drive letter to that partition and use that drive-letter to make checkdisk run a agnostic and repair what it can repair, via an elevated command prompt, put the mouse pointer on an empty part of the taskbar right click and in the context menu click taskmanager if necessary click the icon: "more details" then click "file" and click "run a new task" type in the box: "CMD" and check the box "Create this task with administrative privileges" then click "OK" use the diskpart command and then type "list disk" then type the "sel disk" followed by "list part" and then "sel part <part number of the partition called EFI, or has as info "system" or as type "system">" then type "detail part" and then you can expect something like the following:

DISKPART> sel part 1

Partition 1 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> detail part

Partition 1
Type : c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b
Hidden : Yes
Required: Yes
Attrib : 0X0000000000000001
Offset in Bytes: 1048576

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
* Volume 19 FAT32 Partition 1202 MB Healthy System


As you can see, my EFI partition has lost its label, which is normally EFI, or maybe I forgot to give it its proper name, the important things are that what is behind the characteristics. The following is what makes the system partition the system partition: Type : c12a7328-f81f-11d2-ba4b-00a0c93ec93b yours should have exactly the same hexadecimal code, every computer, whether Linux, mac or OSx running on the UEFI platform, has exactly this partition with exactly the same characteristics + most likely the Label EFI. It must be a hidden partition, and it most definitely is required, this last attribute is given through its attribute: Attrib : 0X0000000000000001, one other simple thing you can check that is rather important is the following: Offset in Bytes: 1048576 <----- is the optimized distance between the beginning of the disk and the first high level partition, it must never be smaller than that exact number of bytes it maybe bigger, that is no problem. To make the hard drive function as a partitioned hard drive there must be a certain amount of information, there where the low level programs start reading, that information is in the 1048576 Bytes kept free, one will find there, the legacy of BIOS, with the very first sector reserved for a "partition" called protective MBR, MBR based systems thus, with a lot of tweaks can still run on GPT systems. After that there will be the GUID Partition TABLE, or GPT, and only after that, there will be the first high level partition, in my case EFI, who lost her name, but not her function. One last thing is to understand some differences, my EFI partition sometimes also called ESP (EFI SYSTEM PARTITION) is rather large since I planned for more than one OS Booting from that same system, Win 10 Home, Win 10 Enterprise, Linux Bodhi, Win 7 Black edition alien and Win XP Black Edition of entirely pirated goodies, too make my computer with an Intel i7 and 16 GB RAM enjoy an OS which can run smoothly on 1 core and 256 MB of RAM and demands about 2 GB of SSD space. While I'll try to make IMdisk inject an image file of XP Black right into the RAM, so XP will actually run from RAM to chip to RAM and if that won't work I'll try WIN 2000 since Imdisk is native to that OS.

Use while you have selected the EFI partition, the command "assign letter=X" it will most likely accpet that letter til reboot, but until it is time to think about rebooting, you must most definitely run the following two commands, "exit" to leave diskpart and then: "chkdsk /f /r /x X:" This will repair both "hardware" and software problems. This "Hardware" problems is not really hardware, over a disk when it is first initialized and formated a "Layer" of software is spread out, we call that special software paint, the files-system, the file system is not how you have your files and folders organized, but how Windows can actually make use of certain characteristics given to the layer of magnetic sensitive paint, by the software, you have heard of, we call it files system when we talk about just any, but Windows will call it NTFS, or FAT16, or FAT32 or EXFAT, and M$ has made a new one implemented with win 8 I think, REFS which makes it rather difficult to accidentally ever destroy a file by wiping it, since every-time a file is opened changed and closed, REFS simply demands from windows to safe it completely anew somewhere else, without touching the previous file. Too bad win 10 cannot run from that system. Linux has Ext EXT2 EXT3 EXT4, the last two, like NTFS and many more are called journaling FS, since the software can actually report and do stuff, BTRFS, for linux backs itself up not unlike REFS, REISERF4, is especially made for very small files, often written and deleted and is way faster than other Filesystems as long as it works with the temporary files and nothing bigger.

A possible way to work to correct the drive letters, of the "locked" drives is as follows.

diskpart <enter>

List disk <enter>

list volume <enter> (notice that the partition ranging somewhere between 16 MB to 200 MB in size does not have a volume associated with it, it must not have a volume, so do not assign a letter to that volume. This weird partition without a soul is the solution to the absence of, for instance, invisible sectors, like Win XP had, and GPT does not allow for. The MSR is more, it is also a tiny bit of not encrypted C:\ and possibly the only way to get back into C:\ when your drive letters are missing, or so. If it does have a drive letter, it must be killed, it cannot have a soul and you have checked that it is called MSR (Microsoft Reserved Partition) than there may be more things that need attention) Some drives are protected from utter death by the system and or by GPT attributes. you cannot easily kill them dead. However that is what they say about the devil as well, but when you know his name, you hold power over any DEMON. all you have to do is to rename the partition you can't kill to create a new one in a certain manner: "set id=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000", this demon will not trick you, if he won't give his name, so you can't hold power over him, simply rename him, and now that this will kill that partition dead.

when my issue looks like your issue:

sel disk 1 <enter> (disk with Windows installation that needs to boot again)

list part <enter> check the list of partitions and try to find characteristics of which you know only the original C:\ drive has them, like a certain amount of GB or maybe the original Label of the drive, check its drive letter, and if it has been assigned any drive letter not being C, than you are likely the victim of the same problem.

Now look for what drive is assigned the letter C:

sel disk 0 <enter>, if one needs to select the other drive,

list part <enter>, and see if C is there, if so:

sel part 3 <enter> in which part 3 is the partition actually being assigned drive letter C

remove letter=C <enter> then go back previous drive, where C should be assigned

sel disk 1 <enter>

sel part 3 <enter> in which part 3 is the actual C drive with the OS in need of a successful boot.

assign letter=C <enter>

exit <enter> (command to leave diskpart)

exit <enter> (command to leave command prompt and return to the repair options window, then REBOOT and hope for success.)



Read about BCDedit.exe DISM.exe BCDboot.exe SFC.exe , if you have checked hidden drives with chkdisk, run "sfc /scannow" (will take likely 10 mins to finish) and chkdisk may take some time as well and most certainly from command prompt give this one a try, maybe it works, but only after reassigning the drive letters did nothing, not even an hint of a boot. This one must be run from a command prompt before OS, since it is an offline command: sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows as you can see, this command names two different partitions C:\ This is important to know if you want to repair EFI with BCDedit, it took me awhile to find out that the name C:\ changes from one drive to the next, thus I killed my first efi's rather dead, I committed proper murderdeathkill on them. They got properly by my ignorance.



I hope that this will help someone, maybe even you, if you have not already found a proper solution that is.



PS: Remember free-ware is damned good, go to Piriform and download Recuva, it will find for you more files than you imagined could be on that tiny drive. Which immediately shows you that a formatted drive is still very readable, when you sell it.



One very last thing, How to get out of selective start up, when elevated msconfig will by no means ever change that third ball back to first?
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