#1 ·
So, I fired up my PC—something’s definitely gone sideways—and it just sits there staring at me with this > message...
I tried a complete reinstall of Windows, thinking maybe a fresh start would fix whatever mess is going on. I popped in a disc, set the boot priority in the BIOS to hit the optical drive first, and the installation actually kicked off. But here’s the thing: every single time the system tries to reboot during the process, that damn > screen pops up, hangs for a few seconds, and then eventually moves on. I managed to breeze through the whole setup, finished all the configurations, but then comes the final reboot right before the login screen, and it just freezes. It stays stuck on that > prompt and won't budge. The first two restarts show the message but eventually load, but by the third one, it just refuses to go any further. When I try to run the installer again, I can see that Windows is technically installed and taking up space on the drive. Is it possible the hard drive is failing? I mean, the computer boots, but I can't actually get into Windows or do anything else because it just stalls on that message. Any advice would be appreciated; clearly something is broken, though if you ask me, it doesn't seem like a total catastrophe since I can still trigger an install, but the fact that it fails that last crucial reboot makes me wonder if the hardware is just giving up on me.
I tried a complete reinstall of Windows, thinking maybe a fresh start would fix whatever mess is going on. I popped in a disc, set the boot priority in the BIOS to hit the optical drive first, and the installation actually kicked off. But here’s the thing: every single time the system tries to reboot during the process, that damn > screen pops up, hangs for a few seconds, and then eventually moves on. I managed to breeze through the whole setup, finished all the configurations, but then comes the final reboot right before the login screen, and it just freezes. It stays stuck on that > prompt and won't budge. The first two restarts show the message but eventually load, but by the third one, it just refuses to go any further. When I try to run the installer again, I can see that Windows is technically installed and taking up space on the drive. Is it possible the hard drive is failing? I mean, the computer boots, but I can't actually get into Windows or do anything else because it just stalls on that message. Any advice would be appreciated; clearly something is broken, though if you ask me, it doesn't seem like a total catastrophe since I can still trigger an install, but the fact that it fails that last crucial reboot makes me wonder if the hardware is just giving up on me.