Solved Reinstall Windows 8 from within Windows 8.1?

Dear All,

I have upgraded my Lenovo desktop from Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 8 when Windows 8 was officially launched. I did it online. Subsequently, Windows 8.1 came along and I have also upgraded to it via the Windows Store. My desktop seems to be running okay except some worrying findings listed below.

I have read the various tutorials and followed them in attempting to get a iso copy of Windows 8 or 8.1 so that, further down the road, I may have the resources to reset/repair my desktop. In was in such a scenario, that I encountered problems when trying a reset.

1. I got this screen and it is blank and I am stuck. I am running with admin account and clicking on refresh just opens more browser windows about installing language again...



Just before this was a screen depicting about installing language again in Windows 8 and there was a confirm button on the upper right corner (sorry can't get a proper graphic of it). Again clicking on the confirm button I did not get a response. Looks like I am in a catch-22 situation...sort of..

2. Another problem was I can't boot from the dvd/cd drive. Pressing F1 (as depicted in the Lenovo screen when booting up) did not get me there. It just boot up to Windows as normal.

3. Trying your other options in the tutorials - going into Upgrade and Recovery etc, gets me the same scenario as item 1.

4. I was wondering if I have an original Windows 8 dvd, can I reinstall everything (doing a clean install) from within Windows 8.1?

Any assistance is much appreciated.

Thank you.
FonZie

If you are not seeing any text in the window, it might be related to the language situation and missing fonts. Have you tried running a System File check to see if it will help?

Admin command prompt and then type

SFC /scannow and wait for it to finish and let us know what it shows.

If that doesn't work, you might be able to use DISM to check the system and there is a tutorial here for using that.

Thks Saltgrass for the prompt assist...here's the results of the scan....



Looks like there is nothing there..

Rgds,
FonZie

Here is the DISM results....



Nothing adverse there as well...

Rgds,
FonZie

With regards to my first post on the languages problem, here is the graphic.....clicking on the confirm gets no response, even after waiting for about 3/4 mins...I timed with my watch...-



Rgds,
FonZie

After you upgrade a system, you might loose some of the OEM recovery options, So I would not really be surprised by that. Some of the F key operations may be set in the bios for certain functions, for instance, my manufacturer just added an F2 option to get into the bios in addition to the Del it normally used. Probably because of the Windows 8 faster booting process.

I am only guessing about what might be wrong because of the mention of adding a language. If you do use language packs, I have no experience with those. It might be some situation where the font is a color where you cannot see it, or you have adjusted the DPI setting and it can't reproduce for some reason.

Is the maintenance symbol on the left of the attachment selectable? One link I looked at mentions opening the Language option in the control panel and see what is listed. There should be one and it says enabled, in my case English. If yours were to show disabled, then you may need to reinstall or refresh it. There are some advanced settings you might check to see if they are applicable.

I suppose you have gone through the tutorial by Brink..

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/5853-display-language-change-windows-8-a.html

If you think that nothing is being written to the dialog box, perhaps you will need to Refresh your system. I don't suppose you have some type of backup Image for it you could restore?

Dear Saltgrass,

Yes my default language is US English. I installed Chinese as a second language pack. Anyway I have deleted it from the list some time before I do this reinstallation project. Now there is only one listed - US English. No I have not fiddled with the fonts colour settings, only the desktop text size - change to medium settings...

On the question of the maintenance symbol being selectable.....no it is not. Similarly with the confirm button on the right....that was my predicament...

I have exercised the option to have a dvd copy of my digital Windows 8 purchase. I am now awaiting its arrival. Meantime the past few days I have downloaded the iso files and burn into cds and try a refresh. That's when I got the problems as explained in my first post. I supposed with the dvd copy I could reinstall Windows - downgrade to Windows 8 essentially. And if it is successful, I can upgrade to Windows 8.1 via the store again. That's my game plan.

I am also curious about Lenovo's hidden recovery partition. When I upgrade from Windows 7 to 8, I might have chosen some installation settings and inadvertantly corrupted it. I can't run the Rescue utility. It says driver initialisation failed and ask to reinstall. Problem I don't have the installation file!

Appreciate your inputs on these...

Rgds,
FonZie

I don't have any experience with the OEM type installs, where they have an additional one or two partitions they use with their recovery options. So exactly how they are set up is hard to determine if that process can be repaired. But the partition you are asking about, if it is around 15 GB, probably contains the factory recovery image, which in your case would be Windows 7.

I do have experience with using a Recovery partition on my system that contains an image used to Reset the OS partition in Windows 8. If the partition does have an image, it can be set to work with the Reset option. What I do not know, is will it work considering the different versions going from Windows 7 to 8 to 8.1

Have you given any thought to reinstalling the Chinese language pack to see if it might help? Do you have any options to reinstall the English language pack?

Do you have the files from the original Windows 8 upgrade, which would probably be is an ESD folder somewhere on your system if you did it online? If you did, you could copy those to a bootable Flash Drive and be able to reinstall Windows 8.

If you want to see what might be in one of the hidden partitions, there are programs that will check, and I think Theog is using one. You can also use Diskpart to assign a letter to the partition and then use the dir /a command to see the file structure. You would be looking for a .wim file around 3 GB in size.

Thank you Saltgrass for sticking with me on my reinstallation concerns/problems....

At the moment I'll leave my desktop alone. It is running Windows 8.1 just fine...like the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"...

I'll wait for the arrival of Windows 8 dvd and keep it for later usage if required..

I'll also pop over to the nearby Lenovo store and ask around about the recovery thingy in Lenovo products..

I appreciate all your assistance Saltgrass....cheers!

Rgds,
FonZie

I just want to share what I did to overcome my concerns in reinstalling my Windows 8.1 desktop.....

The resources I had was a Windows 8 legal dvd from Microsoft and product key. I verified I had my Lenovo recovery partition from the very first time I bought the desktop by doing the disk management steps to see my desktop partitions. The instructions from the bootup flash screen about pressing F1 for setup is wrong - it is actually F2! I got the info from the local friendly Lenovo store! Once I am into it, I followed the onscreen to repair my recovery software. Once done, I was ready to take the plunge to reset my Windows 8.1.

I followed the tutorials here about reseting and clean install - no, I didn't choose the "nothing" option. I need some fallback option in case I get into problems in my reset procedures....so I chose "keep my windows files etc.." It is saved in a windows.old folder.

My desktop went from Windows 8.1 to the original Windows 7 Home OEM version. I did some spring cleaning - updates etc. I waited for a day later to embark on the next phase - installing Windows 8 and tinker with it for a day or so. In the installation process there were no blank screen as my earlier problem I posted. It actually were information on some incompatible software/drivers Windows discovered and ask me to rectify them before continuing with the install. I had to reinstall my language (English US over English UK) and keyboard (Qwerty or Dvorak). It asked to uninstall the supplied Mcafee antivirus.

After the successful reinstall, it automatically downloaded some 70 security updates later in the day and I installed them. There were two updates (can't remember which one that was not successful). I researched about it and discovered about doing the DISM thingy (just like the tutorials here). Later in the day when I shut down my desktop, there was a "Update and Shutdown" option and choosing that, my desktop was updating the security updates....wonderful MS!

My only problem was that I was not able to verify my desktop with my Microsoft account. Not a problem I still can get into the store and upgrade to Windows 8.1. Windows said I can go ahead and do the upgrade but my desktop remains unverifed. I later researched about this MS account problem and found the link - I think I might have attempted more than 3 times verifcations steps! I emailed MS about my problem and still waiting for a reply..

Since my desktop is now ok (?), I better enjoy it and have the option in mind to do a real clean install later!

I hope my sharing my experiences may help someone else in their Windows 8 installation processes..good luck!

Rgds,
fonzie