Blue screen & Reinstall

Windows 10 PC suddenly started giving blue screens, nothing I tried would get the PC to boot up properly, couldn't get into safe mode or anything. Tried to install from USB but that didn't work.

I removed hard drive and using a reader I was able to access files etc....so hard drive is not totally corrupt.

Is it possible to wipe hard drive and reinstall windows?

Of course you can reinstall Windows. Rather than wiping your current drive I would be inclined to replace it, and take the chance to upgrade it to an SSD. Both conventional disks and SSDs are cheap as chips nowadays and if your current disk is mechanical an SSD would be a significant upgrade.

The disk doesn't need to be totally corrupt to prevent Windows from booting or installing. Just a problem with the first few sectors would cause that.

You should not need a product key to reinstall - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/al...

It may not even be the hard drive that is faulty, it could be the RAM causing the blue screens. Try doing a memtest to check.

In reply to a post by BB4Tickton:

It may not even be the hard drive that is faulty, it could be the RAM causing the blue screens. Try doing a memtest to check.

How do I do that?

You have to create a bootable USB stick and boot into it before windows starts, have a look here:

https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

Do format options still exist that just reset the boot sectors? I have a dim recollection of MBR and something else.

In reply to a post by BB4Tickton:

You have to create a bootable USB stick and boot into it before windows starts, have a look here:

https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm

I assume it is OK to create this using a different computer?

I assume it is OK to create this using a different computer?


Yes

In reply to a post by pluralist:

Do format options still exist that just reset the boot sectors? I have a dim recollection of MBR and something else.

In a UEFI world this no longer applies. If you truely want to wipe a disk, you can use a Windows boot USBk, go to recovery options, and command prompt and from here using "diskpart" you issue the command "clean" and that is it, empty disk.

In reply to a post by BB4Tickton:

You have to create a bootable USB stick and boot into it before windows starts, have a look here

Windows 10 and 11 include a memory tester built in. Click start menu and search for "memory" should bring up Windows Memory Diagnostic. This is very similar to memtest86 and reboots the PC to do the test.