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Damn this place is still alive?

That would explain it, too late now I guess

Thank you so much for your help @JW0914, you really went all out in helping me exhaust every possible option, well beyond what I expected to find on SE

Alright, I just clean reinstalled, going to get it all set up again and then I'll make sure auto system restore points are set up and I'm going to set a reminder to create an image once I'm done and then once every few weeks

so clean install is the better option

I think it's time to just call it, I tried some other stuff from the docs and I keep getting similar errors to before

If I do F:\Windows it says unable to access the image, with F: I get this

@JW0914 this one

@JW0914 it looks like the cleanup-image command is malformed or something

Waiting on Rufus to get done now then we'll see if I can even get to that point

If all is right, that should end up just saying there wasn't anything to fix, right?

Meeting done, going to try the last option to attempt to fix this install, if that doesn't work I'll clean reinstall

Yeah, I am kind of over having to clean reinstall my PC every few years because of HDD failure or corruption and I have access to a server with ~66TB of storage, so if I could just pull an image every night and maybe store a weekly and monthly separate in case something goes wrong that'd be amazing

I do, but I have never installed those either

How can I ensure those are installed first? Can I do so during install or do I just have them ready and install them as soon as I can once I'm in?

Ah, that makes sense

I don't believe I've ever installed any of those, honestly

Why does that have to be the first?

In too deep to just give up now, though

I am okay investing time troubleshooting, though at this point I agree it'd probably be faster to just reinstall

In a work meeting right now, will have to wait until it's done so I can use my work laptop to open this chat

If that doesn't work, at least we can say we've tried literally everything else

I'll have to try that, then

Re-extracted with 7zip instead of winrar, still doesn't work

Hmm, something isn't right

I'll try mounting it

All files

I see my cursor blink like it's loading something but then nothing seems to happen

Tried extracting to both an old HDD and the SSD

Running setup.exe doesn't seem to be doing anything

Same error again

@JW0914 It has an install.wim but not install.esd

Same error

Is that the expected output or did it fail?

Yes

@JW0914 Can I run these just from within the OS (admin CMD)?

Oh, looks like that is the November 2019 update, so that should work

I am pretty sure the install USB I have now is an older version

Okay so I need the installer for v1909, can I just use the media creation tool for that?

Windows 10 Pro, version 1909 build 18363.778

Alright, booted into Windows again now

Windows is not very clear about what every command/parameter does unless you read the entire docs

Last time I ran just DISM /image:F:\Windows /cleanup-image /restorehealth after doing sfc /scannow, and then I couldn't reboot anymore

What's interesting is that the install seems to be mostly functional after applying the image, I can reboot it and I can use most of my software, but something seems to be wrong with Windows

Re-applying image and doing just SFC, not the other stuff I did that I don't even remember