Windows refusing to boot into OOBE

Question

Whenever I deploy Windows (Recovery environment CLI, Setup environment CLI, Setup environment GUI, Hirens BCD GUI, Hirens BCD third-party tool, Hirens BCD CLI) it either restarts forever without any updates on the loading screen (recovery environment CLI) or gives me a boot_device_inaccessible BSOD (everything else)

The drive is fully functional, as I was upgrading from Windows 10 to 11 when I ran into this issue (my old Windows install is now gone btw, the recovery partition by now included) and chkdsk returns no errors

Windows memory diagnostic and memtest86 return no errors

Trying everything on a different drive (brand new one I just bought) returns the exact same results

Installing Hirens BCD to the internal drive works perfectly.

Tried installing Ubuntu, but couldn't get anywhere

Tried getting a command prompt open by replacing oobe\winload with cmd.exe in regedit (I loaded the hives, yes), no cmd just the same error.

So currently I have Hirens on my internal drive, but I can also boot into it on my usb, and Windows refuses to make it into OOBE. Also, I tried deploying Windows 10 instead as that was what worked on the device previously, I am receiving the same error.

What do you recommend I try to get Windows installed? One more time, I tried 2 drives with Windows 10 and 11 and received this result. Both are nvme drives, one I just bought last week.

Extra info: I do not have another laptop or desktop device.

I made everything by borrowing a co-workers computer.

I have 20$ in my bank account so I can't buy anything really

I tried using dism to 'upgrade' my edition of windows from hirens and received an error, I also tried installing drivers to just use hirens as-is and got an error so it seems to me I cant just daily drive hirens. My coworkers wont allow me to replace their drive with mine to install Windows

***Moved from Windows / Windows 11 / Install and upgrade***

Answer 1

Thank you for your response and suggestions. I have a bootable USB which I used to wipe my drive before updating to Windows 11. I was unaware that Ubuntu required legacy boot, thank you for that. As mentioned in my post, after wiping my drive and installing Windows, it either gives me an error or gets stuck in a boot loop. So I can get Windows deployed/installed on my drive just fine, it just refuses to boot into OOBE. Since there's no 'getting ready' message, I assume it doesn't load windeploy either.

Might you have more ideas to share?

Answer 2

Dear Asa Hida : My name is Brian, I go by MR_Meow becuase I breed pure-bread Oriential Shorthair cats.

I have seen that you are a brand new user on here. I have been thinking about how to answer you for a while now. I have a Suggestion/ Idea; more so then an answer. I know what it is like to be low on $ I been there many times before. Your co-workers sounds like good people very nice/kind/helpful. It is up to you to tell them if you are low on $ or not but, What I would do is if you can invite the co-worker whom gave you the hi-rens CD / DVD / USB device over for a home cooked meal. I like food so do many others sometimes we can make a payment with friendship / kindness and maybe in this case a home cooked meal. Like for example you could offer to cut there grass or do something for them that they need for extange of them helping you with your computer. It is just an Idea but I think it may work. Okay. I think that the best solution at this point is to start from "scratch". You would need to ask your co-worker to use there computer and to use a program called media creation tool. Now I just have a feeling that you may need to format/delete your current hard drive. For Ubuntu /GNU Linux you would need to be in a legacy boot, And to disable UEFI boot, To boot from the USB / DVD device you would need to enter the BIOS and change the boot order to USB as boot device #1. Now to enter the BIOS you would need to read the manual or do a web search of "How to brand + model + boot into BIOS" and "How to brand + model + boot from USB" If it is a laptop the model number is usally on the sticker on the bottom of the laptop. Booting into BIOS is diffrent for each brand + model. Ok. Once that is done you boot from the media creation tool straight off of the usb device and then on set up I would suggest formatting the hard drive. Of course you will loose any data that was on there but it sounds like there is not much data on there at the moment and the PC is basically not working at the moment and getting it working would be great.

Now the Language for the web site is very important so please change the language of the URL to your language is not en-us if needed. Example en-fr is french ,en-gb Great Britain and so on.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-installation-media-for-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d

Okay Let us know how it went. 🐈🐈🐈