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Question

Black Screen After Booting Windows from USB

May 14, 2019 7:39PM PDT
I'm Getting Nothing but a Black Screen After Booting from a Windows 8.1 Bootable USB

Hey everyone, I've gotten myself into quite the predicament. It all started when my C: Drive got corrupted. I decided that it was best to do a clean install of Windows, so I created a Windows 8.1 Bootable USB (I figured it was better to do a clean install because I couldn't fix the corrupted hard drive). After deleting, then creating the partitions, I went ahead and started the Windows 8.1 installation, but no matter what I tried, I couldn't shake off this error "0x80070057" that was preventing me from Installing Windows 8.1 (I tried a lot of things and nothing worked). While investigating in CMD, I realized that my 450 GB System Partition was in RAW format, so I figured that was probably why it couldn't be formatted (Correct me if I'm wrong). So at this point, I was ready to throw in the towel: I couldn't format the hard drive to NTFS to continue the Windows Installation plus I deleted my OS. Thankfully, I found out that with EasUS, you can create a WinPE Bootable USB to boot into EasUS, and format the hard drive to NTFS. So I did that, now my computer is booted into EasUS. At this point, I only had the required partitions, the 450 GB Primary and the 750 MB System Reserved. After successfully formatting the 450 GB Primary Partition to NTFS, I pulled off a rookie move and deleted the 750 MB System Reserved Partition by accident. I couldn't find a way to recreate it in EaseUS (I bet there was a way to do so, but my patience was wearing thin). Tired and fed up, I went ahead and applied the changes in EasUS then exited the program. I hadn't realized that the 750 MB System Reserved Partition was that important. I figured that I could recreate it after booting from the Windows Bootable USB but, to my horror, I realized that I could no longer boot from anything. No matter what I tried, I kept getting a black screen after the Windows Logo. I thought my USB was corrupted, so I went ahead and reformatted it, then created a new Windows 8.1 Bootable USB. No use. I still get the black screen after the Windows Logo. So NOW I'm thinking that I am definitely screwed because I've pretty much locked myself out of every option. I feel like such a moron.

Here are my conditions:

* No OS is Installed
* My System Reserved Partition is missing
* Booting from a Windows 8.1 Bootable USB shows a black screen after the Windows Logo (No cursor or anything)

Do I still have any options?

Post was last edited on May 15, 2019 8:44 AM PDT

Discussion is locked

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Answer
My next move
May 14, 2019 8:22PM PDT

Would be to install a new blank drive to start over leaving the old drive as-is, disconnected so that later I can add it back in to copy out any files I might not have on backups.

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Seems like the Best Move
May 14, 2019 8:38PM PDT

Yeah, that seems like the best option. Thanks for the quick reply Happy