I thought just booting off the USB and installing was a clean install. Nothing was saved but what is listed in C. no other files or programs were saved. lol a 443GB clean install!! where are all those files?
I forgot stuff. Usually when installing something on a disk, it gets formatted and warns you. Apparently not with the HD. Too bad this isn't a "clean" install because it's running well. I'm not finding anything not working but it is using much more than twice the space of a normal, clean install,
If you do not delete all partitions before starting the process, it will move the existing install into Windows.old. Setup won't delete anything by itself, MS would never do that.
@Carlos Detweiller When he boots, he claims he sees an option to choose windows 10 or 11, which sounds like they live in different partitions on the same disk. (Or maybe different disks.) Would not the windows.old folder be a new installation over top a previous installation on an existing partition? To quote @hoak - what we have here is rats nest confusion.
The choice might be remnants of old BCD entries, possibly not all point to valid installations. Wiping the disk clean and start fresh is the only way of getting out of this.
Again, you have partition table corruption, the only way out is to use DISKPART to wipe the disk, and let the Windows SKU you want write all the formatting data anew when it installs. The good news is if you like how it's performing it will perform even better done right, there are also a ton of post install tweaks and tips on these forums that will get you even more performance.
ok used diskpart to clean and installing now. edit - wow, how did that happen so fast. it's already installed in minutes? already past the keyboard selection
Sounds like you might be finally there -- that's how it should be... As well most OEM Windows installs grossly underperform, so everything should be faster. As long as DISKPART was run correctly and truly wiped everything, and if nothing critical is physically broken -- you should be home free now... You can get cheap replacements for most laptop keyboards on AliExpress, and in many cases they're not too hard to install -- there are videos online for many popular laptops even have repair videos online that include replacing the keyboard.
I'm not really concerned about the forward arrow not functioning. I really hate having to configure settings for everything and my cameras and program installs. It's going to take a week or more to put everything back. *edit - this enterprise does not support KMS. Do I use windows loader then? Thank you and everyone else for helping and comments. I really appreciate it.
yes, I tried all of them in powershell edit - I tried 3 times. the second time it said version 3.12 is outdated. the 3rd time it worked. Thanks for your help
Not sure what you did, what you installed, or what you did after installation, but something is seriously broken if you can't activate with the massgrave hwid, tsforge, options, 1 or 3 when you see the screen below. Or even online kms.
It's activated. For reasons I don't know powershell kept throwing up errors for those links and even said 3.14 was outdated. After a few tries it worked.