updated from 7 to 10, then a few days later, no boot & blinking cursor

a client updated to 10 on his lenovo t530 and a few days later, it won't boot and shows just a blinking cursor. i've searched the heck out of this and tired to fix the mbr through cmd. bootrec did seem to work in deleting and renaming the error logs, but same booting result.

further searching showed a possible graphic driver conflict. i then used the ESD commander, but when loading, it doesn't show any other earlier installs than 10. i can use the recovery tools, but it doesn't show any earlier restore points (client says there were). i then go into ESD and it can't find any problems with dumps that might identify exactly which driver is causing this booting issue. any ideas what graphic drivers to disable? also, if they need updating how do i do that from these rescue disks i use?

also, i've read this might be something as simple as tweaking the bios, but i haven't gotten that far yet.

to back out of this win 10 'upgrade', do i need the OEM disc that came with the laptop? the client doesn't have it any longer.

finally, what makes this so frustrating is the machine itself is working verrrrrrrrry slooooooooooowly, a click to the next page takes minutes instead of a second or two. something that would take a minute after clicking now takes an hour.

sorry for such a long story. back to the coffee and THANKS for any ideas!

thanks for the help, Roland. yes, i think. interesting how it still 'feels' like a windows 7 machine.

You said the PC won't boot, yet you have a screen print of Disk Management.
How did you boot the PC to get to Disk Management ?
Did you use the "rescue disks" you referred to in post #1?
If so, what are they and where did you get them ?

Your Disk Management is not like what I'm use to seeing.
The columns are different and not all information is displayed.
Here is a tutorial showing the proper way to post a Disk Management screen print:
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

You might still be able to do a factory recovery, if the Lenovo_Recovery partition is not corrupt and still works.
The screen print below is from the User Guides / English User Guide downloaded from:
Laptops and netbooks :: ThinkPad T Series laptops :: ThinkPad T530 - Lenovo Support (US)



If the PC owner wants Win 10, a clean install of Win 10 might work, but that would mean more questions.

Hello David and thanks for all your info. Yes, I booted through the MSDaRT disc, used the 'computer management' utility to get to the screenprint you see.

at this point the client would like to uninstall the upgrade. i read somewhere in my travels that there is a windows.old file someplace that is retained for 30 days after the upgrade, then deleted.

any kind of direction would be great, guys. the only other clues i can give you is how slow the PC seems to 'boot' & run while loading screens. finally, the blinking cursor comes up almost immediately after my chance to get into the bios ends.

berbes said:

at this point the client would like to uninstall the upgrade. i read somewhere in my travels that there is a windows.old file someplace that is retained for 30 days after the upgrade, then deleted.

See this tutorial by Brink:
Windows 10 - Go Back to Previous Windows - Windows 10 Forums

excellent! now, how do i get to those screens for uninstalling, considering my booting issues of only getting a blinking cursor? can i boot off any windows 10 OEM disc? the windows 7 disc that came with this laptop is MIA.

again, thanks for the wisdom, especially on a sunday.

The tutorial link in post #7 has a link to this tutorial:
Advanced Startup Options - Boot to in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
Try Option Six in this tutorial to see if you can get to the Recovery Options at bootup.
or
Try Option Five to boot from a Win 10 install media to get to the Recovery Options.

Here is the tutorial with a link to download the Win 10 ISO if you need that:
Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Forums

well, i couldn't get it to hard reboot (option 6), but i got it to boot into a win10 disc, where i got it to advanced options and 'go back to previous build', but it stalled on the first step (restarting). then, i saw the reset option, where it keeps your files, and it seems to re-layer the OS. is that my next option or is there a better one? at this point, all i want is this pc to boot and keep the files.

what a brain-splitter!