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Tinman

Tinman

PCHF Member
Apr 11, 2017
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Hi there.
I think that I've done a silly thing, pretending to know what I'm doing.

I have a HP Laptop on Windows 8/8.1 64 bit and with Amd Radeon graphics. Not used it for a long time, so I opened it up and all was working great.

But I wanted to make sure things like Windows Updates were up to date so I did that, amongst other tweaks. Then I decided to check my Amd drivers and went to the website downloading a Amd console for Windows 8.1. Installed this and the console started and analysed my pc. It then came back with a list of recommended updates and to install activate restart.
After doing so my laptop restarted. It now starts with the HP intro logo and egg timer. But doesn't go to my log in screen, to then get me to my desktop. All I have is a dark grey screen, as if it's at the log screen, but no image.

I've tried to boot into safe mode, to roll back and system restore, but it won't go there. Pressing shift plus F8 and F8 on its own does no good. That's what I researched online to press for safe mode. Somebody said that the safe mode in Windows 8 as been disabled. I don't know?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Tinman
 
my educated guess is you went to a 'driver update' website and used one of their programs that scans your PC and recommends all the things that need to be done to it.

in my experience, not only are the vast majority of those sites dodgy as all , or the software is nothing more than a malicious payload delivery system, but the vendors are just snake-oil salesman and they do more harm than good trying to 2nd guess all the drivers that your system 'needs'.

not knowing what their program has done, or the band-aid solutions that may be needed to get the PC to boot and work again - I'd be taking the opportunity to start from scratch.

the laptop should have a recovery partition that the manufacturer left a system image on for doing factory resets, so you could go down that path and reload Win8.
but why not load WIn10 - it's still free to upgrade to.
so.... get yourself the Windows Media Creation Tool, download the latest Windows build and make a bootable USB stick image (al done by the program) and boot from that stick on your PC. when prompted to enter the Product Key, press "I don't have one" and let it continue.
once done and you have the PC back on the web, it'll auto-activate for you if it can.
 
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Hi Bruce and thanks for your reply.

I've managed to get to the diagnostic section. It was press escape and not F8.

There were options like refresh pc with or without loosing files. I went though to advance and system restore, with only two recent restore points. So I tried one and error. Tried the other and error. Which is error ox8007051a. Looking online it says some system or registry error.

So I guess my next thing is to look at the refresh option. I will look at the Windows 10 option too, which I've considered doing to the laptop before.

So next few days I'll look at those solutions. What do you and others think?

Please keep this thread open until further investigation.

Thank you

Tinman
 
while using Restore Points was a good roll of the dice, and yes you can get lucky with them, in my experience they've been all but useless.
so much in fact that they are one of my groups of tweaks and get turned off on any of my PC's.
they only snapshot system files, and only a handful of those. the ones that are needed to get Windows going after a dodgy update or driver release.
they don't, and never have, included any personal files, a fact that surprises a lot of users way too late.

it would be great if you had your own system image backup - but I feel that horse has bolted.
in future though, take a look at Macrium Reflect Free to take your own PC-wide personal snapshot of the whole drive.
one of those would come in handy now. :)

I concur - time for a fresh install.
 
Thanks Bruce again for your reply and info. Much obliged.

The error online states in basic terms: The "0x8007051a" error is commonly caused by incorrectly configured system settings or irregular entries in the Windows registry. This error may be fixed with special software that repairs the registry and tunes up system settings to restore stability.

So it's looking like a fresh install as you say. I have 2 other options though, but not sure I should bother pursuing them?
Fresh restore (keep some files) Fresh restore (lose most files) and start from the beginning. I'm not sure, but I think the first option would bring back the broken registry and subsequently my fault? The second I'm not sure what the outcome would be too. I'm also unsure on the latter options too. Do I need a clone of my OS on a disc or usb (which I don't have) or does it recover my original system and files from a recovery partition I noticed when it was working there was a drive called recovery?

Another option I'm looking at is your idea of the Windows 10 media tool, download then create an ISO. Can you still get this? Do you have to pay for a product key of some kind, for the iso and for me to go from Windows 8 to Windows 10?

Anyway lessons learnt here and all part of the education. Grrr
 
the problem I would have if it were my PC is not knowing what this 'driver'update' process has done.
so you sort of have two problems - get the machine going AND scanning for no leftover gremlins.

both may seem (and could well be) easy but they could also require a lot of to'ing and fro'ing before you have trust in the system again.
so for me, I'd rather burn in hell up front, fresh install everything and know for certain that whatever happened, it is gone.

since the laptop hadn't been used for a long time, hopefully there is no data left on it that you'd care to lose, if there is, you'd have to back it up first before proceeding.

the upgrade from Win8 to Win10 should be free. it'll come down to whether your current laptop version is EOM or retail.
usually the MS activation servers are pretty generous as their primary goal is to simply get everyone onto Win10.
even if your activation fails, you can also reinstall Win8 either from the discs the laptop may have came with or from downloading the ISO image from MS.
 
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