Windows blocks adding it to OOBE
Windows blocks adding it to OOBE
Whenever I start a Windows installation (recovery CLI, setup CLI, setup GUI, Hirens BCD GUI, third-party Hirens BCD tool, or Hirens CLI), it either keeps restarting indefinitely without any updates on the loading screen (recovery CLI) or displays a boot_device_inaccessible BSOD (otherwise).
The drive works fine; I upgraded from Windows 10 to 11 and the old installation is no longer available. The chkdsk utility shows no errors, and memory diagnostics and memtest86 also pass without issues.
Testing on a different drive (a brand new one I recently purchased) yields identical results.
Installing Hirens BCD on my internal drive functions perfectly. I attempted to install Ubuntu but couldn't proceed.
I modified the registry by replacing oobe\winload with cmd.exe and tried launching a command prompt, but still encountered the same error.
Currently, I have Hirens installed on my internal drive, but I can boot into it via USB, while Windows refuses to boot it into OOBE.
Additionally, I tried installing Windows 10 again because it worked previously, but the same error persists.
What recommendations do you have for installing Windows? One more time—tried two drives with Windows 10 and 11, both resulted in this issue.
Extra details: I don’t own another laptop or desktop. Everything was done using a colleague’s computer.
I have $20 in my bank account, which limits what I can purchase.
I used DISM to upgrade my Hirens edition to Windows 10, but that failed. I also tried installing drivers to use Hirens directly, but that caused an error. It seems I can’t simply daily drive Hirens.
My coworkers won’t let me swap their drives with mine for installation.