win10 restart and update nightmare

Hello all

Been a while since i logged here.
Been struggling for months with my laptops win10. Since I upgraded form windows 7 it was ok, but now it just does not restart, I cannot upgrade because it hangs in restart. I cannot even refresh windows 10 because it hangs. Shut down works sometimes and force shut down when needed (on restart stucks for ex.)
My rig is old but faithfull and I have no clue where my windows 7 original disk or key is now, so I am blocked from trying to reinstall from USB or similar fix. Besides everything works besides the damned restarts, which are needed for upgrades and some installs..

ope someone can help me, I have tried everything but nothing works. Windows repair gets stuck in restart, safe mode restart gets stuck, no single fix that requires a restart works because it just doesnt restart.

 

thanks?

 

Nothing to stop you from re-installing Win 10 from scratch. When it asks for a serial number just say you don't have one and make sure you install the correct version from the next screen. Once you finish the install and can connect to the net it should check with the MS servers and see that your particular machine ID has been activated before and activate Windows. I do it all the time and after the initial install I never have to use the serial number again.

I would advise making a backup of the current setup just in case you need to get access to anything in it

 

If you used the windows 7 key to upgrade it should let you install 10 with it now IIRC.

 

Have you tried to turn off Windows 10's quick start thingy?

 

Yes I have tried every tweak available. I guess I will have to reinstall form an usb device from scratch, what I fear is that this might happen again, since all updates were performed normally until it started having reboot issues.The othe weird symptom is that when the PC is turned off and the started (normally not force shut down) its starts with my external 3.0 USB toshiba drives with no blue light (i.e. slower, only white light) and any attempt to run games or benchmarks dont open and crash or have to be closed. This is when I try to reboot, it freezes and then I force shut down and turn it back on, then blue light appears on the drives and the games work fine.

Sometimes windows starts with a blue screen stating last time it didnt start normally and gives me a driver power state failure error.
Today I contacted windows support and they sent me this link, which is not usefull because I am not so advanced to use what they suggest.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff559329(v=vs.85).aspx

As for the windows key I found it! I remembered the sticker under the laptop .. jajaja.
So right now my conundrum is if fresh install would solve the issue or not, since I will be updating windows and AMD drivers to their most recent versions anyway.
If not, I can live up as it is and settle to force shut down daily to be able to play, is just it doesnt feel right to do so, I dont want to damage any hardware.

thanks for your replies, I always find a helping hand in this forum.

 

Yes, as long as it's not a very old build and the Win 7 key has been activated/is genuine, this should work just fine.

@Vozier If the system in question is the P150EM in your sig, note that it never received firmware treatment for Win 10. I don't know how reliable Windows 10 will continue to be as it's updated on your model.

 

Did you try this? I had an issue with shutdowns after recent windows 10 update randomly enabling fast startup. It resolved my issue with shutdowns. While it says it fixes shutdown only, I have seen users have their restart fixed. You could also open an elevated cmd and type
powercfg -h off to disable hibernate and fast startup all together if you don't need hibernate too.

Also check this. Basically open elevated cmd and type bcdboot C:\windows (replace C: with your Windows partition drive).

I hope one of these might resolve your issue if you haven't tried them.

 

Hi again

Update.
I went ahead and reinstalled windows 10 from scratch, not surprisingly in the middle of the install it got stuck on a restart and then it was some hours until i managed to boot it in safe mode (it usually just booted black screens). The only way to boot it normally and restart it normally was to disable my Radeon 7970M... I tried many uninstalls, DDU, drivers, but nothing fixed the issue. It seems windows 10 wrongly installs another driver for the card and that generates all the hassle, buit it aint simple to fix (actually impossible).
Well,. after wasting some good hours trying, I randomly checked reset windows 10, wiping everything off (same setting I initially tried anyway), I expected the install would freeze again (it did shortly after cortana started setting hour and region the first time) , BUT to my surprise it went on and finished installing everything without any issues...!!!!
So far everything works fine, device manager shows all hardware working properly, games run fine, and USB 3 starts normally... PC restarts and shuts down normally....
So in few words: after bashing my head against the wall repeatedly, cursing windows for being ever so annoying, I decided to keep everything as it is. The 7970M drivers windows 10 installed are a bit old (11/21/2016), but they work just as fine as they used to, I havent benchmarked them yet (3dmark11 does not seem to run in windows10 btw).
So the story aint positive IMHO, windows just does not seem to get it together after 20 or more years, every reinstall is different, every time, and almost always makes you mad at the very least. That is just unacceptable, but take it to the folks at microsoft...

In the short run I will not update any drivers, the gain just dont seem to be worth the pain.

Hope everything will keep running normally if windows updates itself as well, crossing fingers.

thanks all for the input and I hope this post helps some others stuck in the same problems.

Windows key installed automatically as you said

 

Seeing that you have a AMD Radeon HD 7970M, it sounds like you've been hit by the ULPS (Ultra Low Power States) bug with Catalyst 16.7.3 (third driver release in July 2016) and later drivers on GCN 1.0 cards like the 7970M. Windows 10 hangs/crashes on restart/full shutdown when ULPS is enabled, which it is by default when you install newer drivers.

If you want to use newer drivers, try to disable ULPS via registry or certain tools (use your favorite internet search engine to find out how to do that - it won't be applied until after a system restart, though, which sucks), or use Display Driver Uninstaller and then install Catalyst 16.7.2 (second driver release in July 2016) or earlier. 16.7.3 and later drivers have problems with ULPS enabled, including Windows 10 hanging/crashing on (full!) shutdown/restart.

For me, this bug only appears when I have Crossfire and ULPS enabled. What I do after every driver installation to avoid it:
If you happen to use Crossfire and have drivers newer than 16.7.2 installed, disable Crossfire via Radeon Settings/CCC, then disable ULPS and restart. It shouldn't hang while Crossfire is disabled.
After the restart is done, enable Crossfire again. After that, Windows should restart and shutdown just fine even with Crossfire enabled (until you install a new driver, in which case you have to repeat the procedure).
Ensure that Windows Update driver installations are disabled so Windows doesn't randomly update your driver and cause the problem again (I strongly suggest running Display Driver Uninstaller which disables automatic display driver updates to clean out any remains of old drivers before installing new ones).


Note that disabling ULPS will keep the card(s) clocked higher and thus consume more power, run hotter and potentially shorten their lifespan.


Being someone that always installs the latest drivers, I'm eternally glad that I won't have to deal with this hassle anymore once my new system arrives.