I have a brand new Lenovo laptop (one that boots this time). I want to sell it, as pristine as possible, with the windows setup intact, ready to boot for its new owner.
I could leave it in the box and ship it out – but… The last Lenovo laptop (this one is a replacement) was a brick right from the beginning. I opened the box, turned on the laptop, let it come up to the Windows setup, and pressed power off for ten seconds.
On restart the next time it comes up saying Windows failed to boot – NOT what you want a new buyer to see. But I also don't want to complete the setup.
The solution is to come up to the screen asking for a user name and a name for the computer…
…hit Shift – F10. You will get a command window – in that window type "shutdown /s" and hit Enter.
Wait approximately 30 seconds – the computer will shutdown and on restart come up clean without errors.
—doug