Solved! Windows 8.1 Factory Reset taking too long!

[Qwerty Birdy]

My HP laptop was having a sudden sluggish behavior this past few days though my HDD is not yet full or some sort. I just noticed a beeping sound coming from the HDD. I decided to back up my files and opted for a factory reset (provided by Windows). I chose to fully clean everything, including my hard drives and everything went smoothly, until now. It has been more than 5 hours and I am still seeing the blue HP logo with the circling icon along with "Resetting your PC 17%". 5 hours and it is still at 17%, are you kidding me? This is taking ages! I don't know what could have caused this but I don't have that much of a time. And also, it has been at 17% and no sign of moving for awhile now. My HDD is 1TB though I only used half of it. One thing I also noticed is the small HDD (I think) light flicker besides my laptop, along with the power light flicker, has no activity. It is completely dark; no light, no flicking, only the power light is lit.

Could someone shed light on this one? I might reconsider bringing my laptop to a shop now.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Number one suspect for me would be a faulty HDD --- can be checked by testing it with SeaTools Bootable:
https/www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

 

[SkyNetRising]

Probably damaged hdd. HDD may need to be replaced.

Ressetting pc with failed hdd was not a very good idea.

 

[Solandri]

If you backed up everything and are trying to do a full reset, then this shouldn't be that big a deal. Just turn the computer off and try to reset it again. The restore info is stored in a separate partition from the system that's being restored. So if the process failed due to some software error, you can just reboot and try initiating it again. If it failed due to a hardware error, then it was never going to finish in the first place, though you can certainly try again. Worst case would be if the boot info on the drive is damaged, in which case you may need the help of a Windows boot CD/USB to get the process started again.

Actually, now that I think about it, worst case would be if the manufacturer decided to use its own restore software instead of the one built into Windows. I've seen a couple manufacturers do that. Once the system is unbootable on those, you can't restore it. But nobody should be doing that anymore since Windows 8/10.

I would leave it overnight. I've seen a reset take over 4 hours with a SSD. I can easily imagine it taking more than 5 hours with a HDD. And no HDD activity (nor CPU activity) seems to be a theme with Microsoft. Seen it happen often with updates and restores. Dunno what they're doing, but after enough time it seems to get over the hump and continues about half the time.