My laptop previously developed an issue where I could only click the currently active window. Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete would temporarily restore normal behavior, but the problem kept returning. I disconnected all USB devices and peripherals, tried another mouse and keyboard, and disabled startup applications and processes. After hearing that resetting Windows helped others, I reset the PC. Now I'm stuck in the Windows 11 setup screen because none of the buttons respond, including the option to connect to the internet. Is there a way to recover from this, or is the laptop effectively unusable?
1 Answer
This is probably a damaged Windows installation or a driver issue rather than a dead laptop. Boot the machine from a USB drive containing a live operating system, such as a Linux installer or a Windows recovery environment. If everything works there, use it to back up your files, then perform a clean Windows installation from USB, deleting the existing system partition during setup.
Using the USB-based installation fixed it—thank you!
I selected the option to download and install a fresh copy of Windows during the reset. Shouldn’t that have fixed the problem?