Solved! Laptop won’t boot windows

[gpgrocker]

My MSI GE62 Apache Pro-004 won’t boot into windows. When I go to boot, it either just takes me to a black screen (skips MSI splash) and does nothing no matter how long I leave it, or shows the MSI splash then goes to BIOS about a minute later. Earlier it was getting to windows, then getting stuck in automatic repair each time. I haven’t been able to get back to even there in a couple hours however. I made no recent changes prior to this occurring, but the cause for my reset was task manager only having icons, no words or values. Need this laptop for school, so I’m a bit stressed over this.

Note, from my own research I’ve seen some fixes being by disabling fast boot. I’ve attempted turning off fast boot, no effect.

In the bios, my hard drive shows with full name under storage info on sata 3. It only shows as “Hard Drive” in the boot order.

Thanks in advance,
Griffin

Update: while mindlessly looping through restarts seeing if it would let me boot to windows, it finally did and is now sitting at “preparing automatic repair”. This did nothing last time, but I’m gonna leave it for a couple hours.

Update 2: automatic repair failed to do anything but I was able to access cmd from there. Disabled automatic repair, attempting to boot again.

Update 3: final update for tonight. It booted to bios. I’m gonna see if I can get through to windows again, but this definitely feels like a temporary solution if I can.

 

[ron2456]

Do you have any friend or neighbor who will allow you to use the pc? If yes then make a bootable Windows 10 USB tool and try to repair with it.

Looks like something corrupted the OS during a update.

 

[gpgrocker]

I haven’t done an update recently, so I don’t see how that would be possible

 

[ron2456]

Then try reinstalling windows if you haven't done any updates because Microsoft occasionally puts out silent updates that doesn't need a reboot (namely the KB4023814) so at this point whatever you did, its practically impossible to restore windows without losing apps and settings.

 

[gpgrocker]

I managed to get a bit further into windows boot, apparently part of the system registry is either corrupt or missing. What it says exactly is "the operating system couldn't be loaded because the system registry file is missing or contains errors". I have a win10 boot usb on hand now. Startup repair did nothing, running chkdsk right now but it's saying eta will be over 300:10:40, and i figure that's hours, minutes, seconds. Anything else I can try other than a full reinstall of windows? Especially anything that'll let me save the files on the installation partition...

edit: system restore had failed too

 

[ron2456]

One thing that you can try is to install windows to another partition and then recover the files from the previous partition and then reinstall them.

 

[ron2456]

Also does Repair from USB stick work?

 

[gpgrocker]

The only info i've been able to find on repairing from usb just says to use startup repair, which as i said, didn't work. I think i have a partition i can use for windows temporarily...

 

[ron2456]

Then Install windows on that partition and recover all files from the previous partition and then reinstall windows to the original partition.

 

[gpgrocker]

Will do. I'll come back with an answer if this fixes or not

 

[gpgrocker]

Waiting for the first install to finish, but had one question. Any way I can use this install's registry to repair the one on my original install?

 

[gpgrocker]

This fresh install on the second partition won't launch windows either. Just goes into automatic repair and then fails to repair.

 

[ron2456]

Are both of this installs on the same physical disk?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

At this point, if both partitions are on the same physical disk, I'd be tempted to test the disk with a bootable USB pen drive containing SeaTools for DOS:
https/www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/seatools/

It's from Seagate but it will test any brand of HDD.

Or for WD drives only, you can test it with this:
https/support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=2

Testing the drive will show if it's faulty or not before you move on to other possible causes for your problem.

 

[ron2456]

Since you have tried everything, it looks like indeed a bad drive snce it is detected as just a HDD in the bios Boot order instead of the full model number and make.
Try the bootable Seagate Seatools/WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. Create a bootable usb stick from a friend or neighbor or school pc.
1. If the installs were in same physical drives with different partitions then first check with seatools/WD Data Lifeguard bootable, if errors are returned then HDD is faulty.
2. If faulty and in warranty contact manufacturer, but if they replace HDD then data will be erased.
3. Buy a new laptop 2.5" HDD and replace it yourself, put the old one in an Enclosure and connect via usb to recover files.
4. If files are very important and drive is damaged then go for professional recovery.
5.Try resetting bios to ootimised defaults or updating it as corrupt bios settings may also cause this.

 

[Mustangace]

If it is a bad HD, which I suspect it is at this point, you might want to replace it with an SSD or a new HD and install Windows on that new drive. Then attach your old drive as a slave (secondary) drive for data recovery - things you want to keep like documents, photos, videos, etc. Often a bad hard drive that won't boot to Windows can be accessed as a non-bootable drive, at least for a short time before it fails completely. If THAT is not possible, then you know you really have a bad drive.

Good luck!