Let's start this off by saying yes, I am retarded.
I've been running on the same Windows Vista computer for years. It has worked great all these years, but more and more programs have been locking Vista users out, so I started looking into updating the OS. A friend told me about something called Windows 10 to Go where you can install Windows 10 onto a USB drive and plug it into any computer and have access to Windows 10 without losing your own operating system. I figured I'd try it out to make sure my computer could handle the jump to a newer OS, and then I would decide to get my own copy of Windows 10 from there.
I plugged in my friend's USB and Windows 10 did actually start up. There was a popup in the corner saying it needed to update something before the computer could display in 1080p, and then promptly died. I removed the USB stick and loaded back into Windows Vista only to be met with a blue screen of death.
I can still load Vista in safe mode however, and I've been trying all sorts of things to get it working again. I've checked all my drivers and they all say they're up to date, reverted to a previous restore point and tried a clean boot, but everything just leads me back to a blue screen.
I can't really find any information online that could help me with this situation since it isn't exactly something that everyone has gone through. Any help would be appreciated in finding a way to get back into a normal boot mode.
>>155332
Try disabling your display driver (yeah, I know) from Device Manager while in safe mode, then reboot. If you can then run it non-safe with horrible VGA graphics, you're getting somewhere; uninstall & reinstall the display driver.
If that doesn't fix it, it's something else -- a system service or driver that's borked. Unfortunately, identifying the culprit could take some time. But I'm guessing display driver based on what W10 did. Maybe it poked your hardware the wrong way, stranger things have happened.
>>155378
Oh, and also, since you "plugged in your friend's USB", make sure you didn't actually get stuck with some piece of malware that's now giving you trouble. Scan your PC from safe mode to be sure. (I'm assuming you have a decent virus scanner, of course.)
>>155379
I'm all clear on the malware front. I checked their computer before they made the Windows to Go thing and I've checked mine afterwards. So far disabling the display driver and uninstalling it have gotten me back into the ugly version of normal mode, but the moment I reinstall the display driver I need to restart the computer which loops me back to the crash. Would it be safe to completely uninstall the display driver and delete it? Or would the computer not be able to install it again if it is completely deleted?
>>155387
Reinstalling will work fine. Remove the display driver entirely, reboot. This will put you in VGA mode and Windows will probably immediately attempt to (auto-)install a default driver from Windows Update -- politely refuse this if it asks, download the latest drivers from the Internet and install those. If this doesn't resolve the crashing, another hail Mary pass you can try is 1) making sure the card is properly seated in the PCI-e slot (remove it first if necessary) and 2) updating the card's BIOS to the latest version (from the manufacturer's site, it should have a flash tool for that). Yes, sounds weird and shouldn't be related to what W10 did, but I've seen weirder things.
If all that fails, then either your card got busted (bad luck with switching display modes), or the display is actually innocent and it's some *other* driver or hardware component that's interfering with it. Diagnosing that will take much longer. At that point I'd seriously consider a reinstall, and while you're doing that you might as well go through the hoops of testing memory, CPU, etc. If a reinstall is too much trouble to do up front, a Linux USB stick with diagnostics on it would be a good thing to test the hardware with before going that far.
>>155412
I was actually just about to post that I took a gamble and deleted the driver already. Manufacturer still thankfully had the drivers up I needed. Windows took twenty minutes to shut down and restart itself where it immediately went dead again. I then told it to cut it out an restarted it again. I'm not back into normal mode with full control of everything. I don't know if it'll last or not, but I'm hopeful. Lesson learned. Don't try to install Windows 10.
Thanks for your help, anon. I've been tinkering for about fifteen hours on this thing going every which way with it.
