Friday, January 18, 2013

Windows 8 - Cannot Repair, Refresh or Reset - Fix

When overclocking my system(settling for a 40% overclock would be reasonable, but not for me!), I pushed the settings that the system was unstable causing Windows 8 would crash and reboot before I could change settings in my BIOS. Well I thought that was the problem. Playing around with the settings through the command prompt, not restarting when instructed to, making other changes etc., caused Window 8 to fail. Although the OS was rock solid when installed and running for a couple months, I think I did something like rewire my car stereo through the electric window motors with a rail attached to the coil pack. In summary, I messed up my installation.

As you can assume, that is not good. It got to the point where I was no longer able to boot into Windows. These are some things that failed :
  • System Restore
  • System Reset
  • System Refresh
  • Boot in Safe Mode  ( possible not, but not possible to repair booting problems )
What next? I couldn't reinstall Windows 8 over itself, the in-place upgrade was impossible outside of the Windows environment, so I found my Windows 7 disc and decided to give the re-installation  of 7 to 8 another shot. It means that I will have to re-install some software, but I am trying to tell myself to try to be productive, not run tests on system stability like overclocking.

If you have alternate solutions (to a problem which isn't so well defined) you are welcome to make your contributions in the comments below.

I learnt that the word "app" replaces "application" or "program". Keep that in mind when you are restoring or refreshing Windows.