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Question

Blue Screening - Hard Drive Failure

Apr 16, 2019 2:21PM PDT

Greetings people of the Internet.

I am here to seek troubles with a particular PC. It's a PC of a friend that I am trying to assist in repairing.

Essentially, one day their PC randomly blue-screened saying there was a problem. He then restarted the PC and it said there was a boot failure, I don't have the error screen but I'm pretty sure it more or less meant the hard drive decided to die.

So, got a new hard drive and replaced the previous one. Installed a fresh install of Windows 10 and it got to the desktop. Everything seemed okay, then it blue-screened again. This time it was a blue-screen saying the PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. Only it never automatically restarts and just stays on that screen.

It then has continuous problems booting or blue-screening soon after booting, such as saying the PC needs to be repaired.

So, it originally just seemed like a hard drive problem, and initially replacing it seemed to fix it. Tried reinstalling with a fresh install of Windows 10 multiple times has had no success. So I feel like I've ruled out the HDD and the OS. Not sure what I'm missing here. Can reach the BIOS fine, and it gets to the login screen SOMETIMES now.

I've heard the motherboard could be the issue, or trying using yet another HDD. Any assistance would be appreciated. I'm not super computer literate, just a forewarning.

Recovery Screen Error
Error of Despair

Discussion is locked

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Clarification Request
But what is it?
Apr 16, 2019 2:36PM PDT

First the error code has many priors at https://www.google.com/search?q=0xc0000185+site:answers.microsoft.com&gl=US&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwqqaAyNXhAhU9IjQIHVyEBpIQrQIoBDAKegQIBBAL&biw=1600&bih=787 so I won't duplicate those answers here.

Since I don't know much about this PC or the W10 reload I will write that at first most techs get the reload wrong. That is, they don't update and reset the BIOS then they skip the post Windows install work (drivers and apps.) We can not rely on Microsoft to get these for us.

If the initial load works right and fails after Microsoft updates I have seen that. It's drivers again and I usually just start over with a fresh install after the BIOS is updated and reset.

There are other causes like bad ram, heat and leaving USB things plugged in before we have the OS, drivers and apps all installed.

Tell more about the PC, it's age, maintenance and more.

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Answer
A test
Apr 17, 2019 2:22AM PDT

Go to a working machine and grab a copy of memtest.
Put it on a disc or usb stick.
Boot it up and verify it works.

Take the disc or stick to the busted machine.
Boot it up and let it fly for a few hours......no errors allowed.