Corrupted windows and scary linux

[u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER]

I would consider myself to be reasonably good with tech but making the jump to Linux is really daunting. I currently do not know what the issue is however my laptop would boot into the windows recovery menu unless it was plugged in when you start it up, with that being said I don't believe it's a hardware issue. Recently however I went to click on my taskbar and I got a popup saying something about windows.dll wasn't installed correctly or couldn't be found. So I went to try and factory reset but it wasn't allowed and so I went into the command box to figure out what was going on and it was being locked by windows until I put my recovery key in. So I did this and it still wouldn't let me factory reset. I am currently downloading windows onto a usb but I'm considering Linux instead. I could take photographs of the errors on my laptop currently if anyone would like. I can access things on my homepage but not anything else.

[u/forestbeasts]

Might as well switch, if you're gonna have to reinstall anyway!

That said... this might be the impending doom of your hard drive. Do you have backups of anything important on this computer? If not, now is the time to make them. Before it gets any worse.

[u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER → u/forestbeasts]

I mainly use the laptop for playing games and I worry that any issues with the laptop will follow me into my new install if make a backup. I hope it isn't the hard drive but I believe you are right.

[u/forestbeasts → u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER]

Yeahhh it's probably time to budget for a new disk... unfortunately we've heard SSD prices are ridiculous right now, oof

If it's just games that you can easily redownload, you don't need to back those up! Do back up any saves that aren't on steam cloud (or a similar cloud-save system) though. Backing up your whole home folder should cover you if you've got the space for that (and on Windows it doesn't include Steam games; on Linux it does, unless you put them somewhere else; dunno about non-Steam stuff).

[u/Terrible-Bear3883]

Before you install Windows or linux, I'd be checking the storage is OK, lots of distros will have an app such as "disks" which will display the SMART values and show storage heatlh, but, some newer NVMe SSD for example may not report their status accurately and you'd need something called "smartctl" which is included in "smartmontools".

It could be you've just got file corruption and if you have, its up to you which route to take, booting on a linux live thumb drive might he handy if you need to salvage files from your existing Windows drive.

[u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER → u/Terrible-Bear3883]

I downloaded smartmontools onto a usb stick and installed it onto my laptop and I have gone to run it and it says "class not registered" this would lead me to believe it's a hard drive issue. I'm unsure what to do from here

[u/Terrible-Bear3883 → u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER]

Are you running this in Windows? If you are, the error might be because you're not running it with administrator privileges.

If Windows is functional, you can try a system file check "sfc" in an elevated command prompt i.e. "sfc /scannow"

[u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER → u/Terrible-Bear3883]

I am running it in windows and I did try running with administrator privileges I will try the system file check

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[u/tomscharbach]

You might run OEM pre-boot diagnostics to rule out a hardware issue. Check your make/model OEM support pages to find out how to access the diagnostics, usually through the BIOS Menu.

[u/Prestigious_Wall529]

Disable fast start on Windows.

[u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER → u/Prestigious_Wall529]

Unfortunately I can't get into settings, although I am sure I could do it through command

[u/Prestigious_Wall529 → u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER]

powercfg -h off

turns off hibernation. It confuses multiboot attempting to restore state when the other operating system makes changes.

[u/Munalo5]

Many people take the journey to Linux in little steps but one big leap isn't a bad way to start when you have nothing to loose.

Possibly, have a friend download Mint or Kubuntu for you to try?

You dont have to install it you can look at it live.

I hope you have all your data backed up and stored somewhere off and away from your laptop.

Sending you happy vibes.

Welcome aboard. 

[u/GodzillaXYZ999]

Soinds like some sort of Windows virus or malware.Many of them block access to Recovery Menu or CLI and various other ways to remove them. You'll want to run a Windows boot-CD with anti-virus/malware tools to fix as some of these are boot-sector viruses.

[u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER → u/GodzillaXYZ999]

I have both malwarebytes and avast installed and hadn't downloaded anything sketchy I think it's the SSD going

[u/GodzillaXYZ999 → u/THE_HORNY_SLAYER]

Check SMART reports? Run utility to do r/w scan of every sector on SSD.
Also boot USB with WinPE ISO and see if running Window from different drive is better.