Need Help Please.

[MikeH]

I had no idea things changed this much. I was helping a friend with his Toshiba laptop. New Satellite, about 8 months old. He got some kind of virus on it. When he first turned on his computer and started the boot process a screen popped up with a loud alarm. A phone number was there stating virus and call this number. He did call and was told to pay $200.00 to have it fixed, otherwise it was junk. There was a "windows like" dialog box asking for a password. I could really do nothing with the unit. I was going to reinstall windows but was unsure where this code was. I tried to reinstall Windows 10 from a bootable disk. Was told "can't install on a gpt partition. So I was going to delete partitions and was going to recreate them. Over the years I have done this hundreds of times. I don't understand this new GPT partition, Security partitions, EUFI etc. So this is where I ran into some problems. I used a partition program Partition Magic. I converted from GPT to MBR. Changed bios setting to legacy. I booted from my Windows 10 install disk and everything looked good. After completion there was a reboot and nothing happens but a blinking curser. I checked and Windows files are on the primary partition. Hypothetically, if I bought a new hard disk, and was going to install Windows 10, what would be the process in setting up the hard disk?

 

[MikeH]

I got it. Thanks anyway.

 

[HankArnold]

I got it. Thanks anyway.

Could you post the solution? It may help others if they run into a similar situation.

 

[nlinecomputers]

I'm curious about this as well because Windows 10 has no problems with GPT formats, it is the default for Win 10, and even if it did you should have been able to blank the disk and get it to install just fine.

 

[brandonkick]

Yeah, what exactly did you do to fix the issue?

 

[MikeH]

I believe the mistake I made is by creating a partition. From what I have read is that Windows 10 will make 4 partitions from allocated space. So since I had already created a partition it could only install certain windows files in that partition and had no room to create the partitions it needed. I'll be working on the machine on Saturday. I'll post and let you know how it goes.

 

[MikeH]

I did not understand why it would not install on the GPT partition. The only thing I could do is to delete the partitions. I did not know that Windows wants to install on an unallocated partition. The end user did have some kind of RansomWare so my guess is it effected something. I'm no virus expert and new to Windows 10 so I was unprepared.