I bought a Dell 15R Inspiron laptop computer in 2012 with Windows 7 SP2 preinstalled. When Windows 10 became available I downloaded and installed a free upgrade and I have updated Windows 10 ever since. To my knowledge, I never had a digital key number for the Windows 10 upgrade.
After the latest installation of the last Windows 10 update (1909), KB4535996, I think, my Dell laptop will not start normally at all. None of the automatic repairs would work, because of an indication that my D:/ drive could not be found or somesuch.
I created a USB drive with the Windows 10 reinstallation software on it, but I was unable to install as an update because I did not have a license key. And I was not permitted to do a complete install from the USB drive because none of the partitions on the hard drive were "available."
The Dell pre-boot diagnostics that I ran show that all hardware within the computer is working normally.
Now, I cannot boot the computer from the USB drive or from any other media. I can't get to the Advanced Startup Options. I get indications in the top left corner of the screen that "media" is being checked, but after about 5 minutes the screen says that there is no bootable media and I am invited to restart. I can get to the simple boot menu by pressing F12, but I cannot see advanced options any longer.
Earlier today, everything that I tried (restoring prior to a restore point, uninstalling bits of Windows 10) failed to work. I do not work with command line interfaces and really don't know what the heck I am doing when things go THIS WRONG with Windows 10. l hate this.
