Laptop not booting to windows 10. Help please

sooty900

Hi. Can anyone help please? I bought a HP 250 G4 laptop 18 months ago and it has suddenly stopped booting into windows 10. I have a blue screen with troubleshooting options and have done all the diagnostics available here and it passed them all. I have gone through the HP support troubleshooter and nothing changed. It seems that I may have to reinstall Windows. I have never done this before and so will have to buy a device to load it onto it seems. I have no disk and cannot find a product key on the laptop and did not have one with it. Do I need one and where would I get it? Any advice is most welcome please?

emptybox

If the laptop doesn't have a DVD drive then you would need to buy a small USB stick (4GB or more) to put the WIndows 10 ISO onto.
If it does have an optical drive, then blank a DVD disk is all you need.

The easiest way is to install the Media Creation Tool onto another Windows 10 PC and choose to create media for another device.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/15088/windows-create-installation-media
This will make the job of creating a bootable USB or DVD easy.

You would then boot your laptop from the USB or DVD and follow the instructions to install Windows 10 onto it. It should give you the option to keep all your data from the old installation.
This is all presuming that it's not the hard drive in the laptop that has failed. In that case you would need to replace it before installation.

Windows 10 should have automatic activation, so you shouldn't have to worry about the product key.

ETA: When you say you've tried the troubleshooting options on boot up. Have you tried the 'Reset Windows' option? That might save you doing a full reinstallation.

sooty900

Thank you. It does have a DVD drive but I don't have access to another Windows 10 PC or a blank DVD. The diagnostics did recognise the hard drive. It did not give me the option to reset on the blue screen troubleshooter and said it could not do a repair or restore when I tried those options. Can I do this from command prompt? I am borrowing a laptop with windows 7 at the moment and hoping to use this to download Windows 10 to a DVD or USB drive if that's what I end up having to do.

emptybox

The 'Reset this PC' should be an option on the Troubleshooting screen.
https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c03546603

But presuming you've tried all options in there and none have worked, you can download the Windows 10 ISO directly to a Windows 7 machine,and then burn it to a DVD by right clicking the .iso file and selecting 'Burn disc image'. To make a bootable USB you would need to use a utility like Rufus.

You can buy small USB drives cheaply on Amazon or in many supermarkets or Newsagents. Perhaps not worthwhile buying a writable DVD if you haven't got one, as they tend to come in packs of 5 or more,

There are certain things you can try from the command prompt first. Such as if it was a problem with the Master Boot Record on the hard drive, you could try this.
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/repair-master-boot-record-mbr-windows

sooty900

Reset does not come up anywhere for me but yes I tried all the other options a few times. I tried the commands in the link you provided but still no luck. Thanks anyway. I will get a blank DVD or USB drive and try the download. Thanks for all the tips you have given me so far. Really can't understand why it happened as I only do a little browsing and shopping, it is so frustrating. Thank you so much for trying to help me.

sooty900

It seem now that there are different types of DVDs. Can you tell me which type is best to buy to do this with please?

AlwaysHere

Normal DVD-R will do. DVD+R likely to work too.

But have you attempted a Hard Reset? https://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c04593971

If that doesn't work, scroll down to; Restoring your computer when Windows 10 or Windows 8 cannot start normally on the same page.

AlwaysHere

Win10_1709_EnglishInternational_x64.iso

Download this and keep it at hand.

sooty900

Yes thank you AlwaysHere I had already tried both of those.