Solved Corrupted Windows 10 I believe

My computer‘s specs are

intel Core i9 -9700k CPU @ 3.60GHz
Gigabyte 2070 Super OC
32 GB of G.SKILL F4-3000C16-8GISB
Z-390 a Pro Motherboard
1 TB Hard Drive
3TB Hard Drive
4TB Hard Drive
1 TB M.2
500W Bronze Power supply (I think)

When i built this pc i had a 1TB hard drive from my old computer that i just used as my boot drive/main drive until i started to get new parts like the hard drives and ssd. The computer was running fine on the old hard drive (other than slow boot but i didn’t mind that) but recently it’s gotten VERY slow. The computer responds very slowly to my clicks and inputs like opening google can take 10 minutes. Basically everything is just very slow, so i thought it was my windows, maybe it was corrupted, or some malware had gotten to it. I formatted my m.2 drive to put a new windows 10 image on it, and it runs fast, but not as fast as i expected it to. I don’t know a lot about disk drives and data recovery so here i am. Also I don’t know if this following info helps but around 3 months before this started to happen my taskbar would sometimes not accept inputs until 30 minutes later, and when i would shut off my computer i would get a error message while windows was shutting down programs. The error message would disappear to fast to take a picture but it was hexadecimal (0x00000 I think) and it said press ok to debug or cancel to terminate the program. So im now just stuck with an unactivated version of windows and a corrupted or broken Version, if you know of any way to help me please let me know and ask me any questions or info you may need, Thank you.

Bruce said:

g'day penance and welcome to the forum.

let's assume the most likely, the HDD is faulty.
installing Win10 onto the SSD is a great idea, but let's do it again, this time with all the other drives disconnected.

use the Windows Media Creation Tool to make a bootable USB stick with the latest Win10 build on it.
then disconnect from the web and boot from that stick and reload Windows, wiping the SSD when prompted to delete the current partitions.
then load the chipset drivers for the motherboard.

then reboot the PC and see how it performs.
if all good, reconnect one drive at a time and have a bit of a play around again - testing the waters.
repeat until all your drives are reconnected.

when happy, reconnect the internet and Windows should auto activate.

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Thank you for your assistance so far. I have a question regarding the method you suggested. How exactly will it help? I'm curious to know more about how it could potentially improve the performance of my computer. Additionally, I was wondering if this method could also help me fix my access to my old HDD and recover my data on it. Currently, I am able to access some files, but most of my important ones are in my documents and desktop, and I can't access my user folder there. I tried changing the permissions, but it just locked up on one file for 30 minutes, and I assumed it was corrupted. Thank you for your help.

PeterOz said:

Do you have any data you need to get off this computer? If yes then make a ubuntu bootable usb or dvd
https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview NO install needed

Or here is a Youtube on how to make the usb


Copy your data to an external drive or another computer/nas.

Insert the usb or cd/dvd and boot your system. You may have to change bios settings to boot from the usb or cd/dvd(every computer is different) We can help with this.

If you are copying to another usb drive plug it in before booting.

When the computer boots choose TRY UBUNTU and let the system boot.

When booted look on the left-hand side of the screen and click on Files icon
View attachment 11547


Then click on Other Locations
View attachment 11548


Click on your drive for example Win 7
View attachment 11549


Click on Users Icon

Click on your name listed under users

You should now see your data e.g Documents Pictures etc.

Copy your data to an external drive or another computer/nas.

When finished Click on the shutdown icon in the top right-hand corner Click on Power Off



Then download the windows 10 tool – Minimum 8gig USB required

https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/software-download/windows10

and use that to reinstall windows.

Have only one drive connected

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Thank you for your reply, with this method should i only have one drive connected at all times with this? Or only one drive when i reinstalll windows on it? Also I do not have an external hard drive, I can’t move these files from this drive to one of my 4 TB one, as like a intermediary? I will try this method and Bruces method to diagnose my performance becuase my performance on this new windows isnt stable. I get random disconnects while using discord and while playing League of legends yesterday I was getting low frames and latency problems. Anyways, thank you for your help.

Bruce said:

my theory is you may be looking at a faulty drive, so if you reloaded Windows onto the SSD, that may explain your issues.
but also you say you have used an old HDD as the boot drive, if this was still connected when you installed Win10 onto the SSD, who knows what Windows did to get the PC to boot.
It may have put Windows on the SSD, but left the boot drive as active and the MBR (master boot record) still live there.

redoing the install on to the SSD, with all other drives disconnected, and manually deleting all the current partitions on the SSD during the re-install will prove or disprove both those theories - that the SSD may be cactus or the HDD may be to blame.

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Ok, so you saying that the windows installation may have beven corrupted or just wasn’t a clean install due to the old HDD. This makes sense. I have a usb drive with Windows creation media on it, later today I will format my ssd again, but this time i will disconnect all of the drives. When i do this method how would i know if the computers performance is better than it currently is? Should I install programs to stress test my PC? Anywho, I will let you know how it goes again, thank you for your reply Bruce. (Also when you say the SSD may be cactus you mean it may be faulty?)

Bruce said:

correct. cactus = faulty (thought cactus in that context was universal, maybe it's just an Ozzie thing).
yes, only have the SSD connected and the internet disconnected
if the install goes well, SSD should be OK.
then load the motherboard drivers.
then just loading your own software, like Office, Adobe, VLC first then play with those.
you should soon find out if performance is snappy or not.

Click to expand...

Lol, I'm going to start calling my friends cactus now. Motherboard drivers, I should find that on the original documentation of my MOBO and then install them precedingly right? I don't want to make another storage device brick as this one did so I'm just double-checking everything now, sorry if I'm being a bit overly cautious. After this post I will reinstall windows on the SSD with everything disconnected and will reply to this message with an outcome, thank you for replying.

Bruce said:

the motherboard would have come with a CD of all it's drivers.
if not, or if that was years ago, go to your mobo manufactures website and download the latest for you mobo make/model/version.
save them to a USB ready to go.

unless the drive dies, there's nothing you are doing that will kill the drive.

good luck!

Click to expand...

Ok, so you were right. Something happened with windows when i installed it before, When I opened that new windows i installed some settings were already disabled, like mouse acceleration. But on this new version the mouse acceleration was turned on, so this probably resolved my performance issues, I haven’t tested it like aggressively yet but i‘m confident it will work. Thank you Bruce for your help with this issue. Now I need to follow up with what peter replied with about restoring my files. Do you think it is safe to take certain files from my broken drive and then put them on the new windows install? It wont put me back where i started? Finally, if it is safe and i get my data back should i just take out the faulty drive and just throw it? basically what are my last steps with this cactus?

Thank you Peter however, for the past few days my computer has normally been running nad much better than before. I don't think anything is wrong so I wanted to thank you and Bruce for helping solve this issue.