PC won't boot into Windows 10 after (failed?) incomplete system update.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Haus of Tech Support > PC won't boot into Windows 10 after (failed?) incomplete system update.

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Problem description: Shut down my computer and it wanted to install Windows Updates. Nothing weird there. Got 30% done or whatever and restarted. Jumped straight to 75%, then to 80%, then hung there for about half an hour. I then restarted my computer despite all the warnings not to. So yes, this one's on me. Now every time I restart I get to the blue screen with the circular dots and they just keep rotating forever. Ctrl-Alt-Del does not work. Win-P (the one that lets you connect to a projector) works, so Windows still exists in some form. No other key combination I've found works.

Attempted fixes: Restarted a large number of times. Restarted multiple times in quick succession. Waited three hours without restarting. Mashed the keyboard (summoned Narrator, but that's it)

Recent changes: I don't restart super often, so whatever updates were pushed within the last week, possibly two weeks. Haven't installed anything else.

Operating system: Win10 64 bit, whatever version you get when you update from Win8 Pro.

I'd like a way to boot from a USB drive or something. I have a USB drive with the Win10 installer on it, if that helps, or I could maybe put an ISO on there? Brief Googling says that there's no good way to do it, since I can no longer "reboot with F8 in safe mode", in the immortal words of that one commercial. I have an SSD, if the speed of the boot process matters. Any help is appreciated!

DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Mar 3, 2016

# ? Mar 3, 2016 04:28

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# ? May 5, 2024 00:52

Snakes in a can: May 14, 2014

If you have a spare laptop/other PC and a copy of your ISO download Rufus (https://rufus.akeo.ie/) and make a bootable usb (to select an iso hit the button on the right of the ISO drop down box). once that's done set your PC to boot of the USB, most POST screen have a quick select so you can do it that way without having to change your boot order.

This next part i am not 100% sure it will fix your problem, see if you can boot into safemode with the ISO on the USB though and then try then open an admin command prompt and type "sfc /scannow"

if that does not work try the one below

boot to the USB

Once your in the install menu hit the repair PC button, Here you could try the automatic repair but if that does not work try this

hit the troubleshoot button

Then hit the advanced options

Then hit command prompt (You might need to select an account and enter a password from your account)

An old DOS style command line system should come up

Type "diskpart"

Let it load then type "list volume"

You should see all your disks show up, You are looking for the drive with "SYSTEM RESERVE"

Drive C:\ in my case and the boot partition and your drive that has windows on it Drive D:\ in my case

Once you have identified the right drives type "exit"

And type "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=D:\windows" then hit Enter

You might need to change the letterers depending on your setup, in my case its C:\ being your "SYSTEM RESERVED" Drive and D:\ Being your drive with windows on it.

It can take a long time and there is no % loading bar to show how much its done

Let it validate and you should see "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations" if nothings wrong. If you get another message post a copy of it.

# ? Mar 3, 2016 09:04

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

sfc /scannow gave me verification completing properly then "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"

The longer string I got "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service" no matter which drives I tried - that said, I don't actually have a volume listed as "System Reserve". I have a 100 MB partition listed as "System", but not a Reserve-listed one.

Here's a nice pretty picture of my drives from my phone in Dropbox

Trying to use the Windows-provided repair options all don't work:
I guess I have no System Restore points? I thought those were created automatically.
System Image Recovery sounds promising but it doesn't seem to read said image off an external. I do have a large external USB hard drive I could use for that, if it's a thing? I thought that was more for large corporations with IT guys.
Startup Repair just says "couldn't repair your PC" and then outputs a log file to E:\ Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt. I opened that with "type PATH" in the command prompt and it's a bunch of successul checks and diagnoses and ends by listing the only "Root Cause Found" that "Boot status indicates that the OS booted successfully". Does that help identify where in the process the issue is happening maybe?
I can't "go back to the previous build", because "we ran into a problem" - I probably deleted the win7 files with ccleaner or something, honestly.

It looks like the only option I can do from this USB boot is "reset windows", which... reads like it's a format, since it says it removes apps and programs? I guess Microsoft's internal documentation says "Apps you installed from websites and DVDs will be removed.", i.e. everything.

Any other suggestions before I resort to that? I don't really MIND reinstalling everything but it's kind of a pain in the rear end to reconfigure everything.

e: I tried tautologically using E as the bootdir and E:\Windows as the windir and after it ran for a while I got:
"Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Details blah blah E:\windows\logs\cbs\cbs.log"

I used type that to open it and it's PHENOMENALLY long. It takes about a minute to scroll. Can I copy that somewhere if it's actually useful?

DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Mar 4, 2016

# ? Mar 4, 2016 00:03

Snakes in a can: May 14, 2014

DACK FAYDEN posted:

I've got lots ideas on what you could try so ill list a few:

Maybe the windows 10 updates go installed on a corrupted or bad sector on the drive (i am assuming the main drive is a single drive partitioned into 2 parts?) if it is how old is it? and is it an SSD?

First off, with the ISO USB are you able to boot into safemode?

quote:

sfc /scannow gave me verification completing properly then "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"

When you ran the SFC command was it exactly like this: "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=E:\windows"

the letters need to be right or it outputs wrong messages.

did the command prompt have administrator on the top left

quote:

I guess I have no System Restore points? I thought those were created automatically.

Not 100% sure about this but you might need to turn this feature on, i've just checked both my laptop and PC and my laptop has a clean install and its enabled but on my PC i upgraded from windows 7 and its turned off (this could be due to my SSD size though (64 gig on PC and 512 gig on laptop))

quote:

System Image Recovery sounds promising but it doesn't seem to read said image off an external. I do have a large external USB hard drive I could use for that, if it's a thing? I thought that was more for large corporations with IT guys.

This is useless to you unless you make a system image before, it takes a snapshot of your PC's drive at that point in time (if you select them) and replicates them 1 for 1 and you can restore back to that EXACT point in time when you made the image and you can select it when you go to install windows again (you cant pick and choose as its just copy pastes) this is a poo poo explanation

quote:

Startup Repair just says "couldn't repair your PC" and then outputs a log file to E:\ Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt. I opened that with "type PATH" in the command prompt and it's a bunch of successul checks and diagnoses and ends by listing the only "Root Cause Found" that "Boot status indicates that the OS booted successfully". Does that help identify where in the process the issue is happening maybe?

This to me is saying that the MBR is not damaged and does push me towards that the windows internals are corrupted somewhere, though this part is a knowledge gap for me

quote:

I can't "go back to the previous build", because "we ran into a problem" - I probably deleted the win7 files with ccleaner or something, honestly.

This rolls back updates and allows you to go back to windows 7/8, since you cant boot into windows its probably not going to work. (not sure about this)

if you want i can keep throwing suggestions at you until It gets fixed, i throw in the towel or someone with better knowledge/experience comes in.

If you do reinstall everything i would make a system image backup right after you have finished installing software and drivers and set up to how you want it, so if anything does gently caress up again you can just go off that instead of having to reinstall and set everything up again.

If you do decided to reinstall, do a clean install not a "reset windows"; i've found upgrading 'can' cause all sorts of issues some times and sometimes it works flawlessly. E.g. I upgraded 2 laptops last week and one upgraded fine and the other decided that it hates windows 10 and would not boot into it, did a clean install and it worked fine after that.

id like to try fix this as its good experience for me but if you want to just get it working with a reinstall i don't blame you

# ? Mar 4, 2016 13:41

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Haus of Tech Support > PC won't boot into Windows 10 after (failed?) incomplete system update.