I have a 2 year old 17" laptop with Win 10 home installed, a top-o-the-line gamer. Unfortunately, I let someone else use it and they permitted an automatic update to begin. It is now bricked.
Power-on, manufacturer’s logo (not Win logo) for a few seconds, then the message, “Windows is attempting to recover”, then “Undoing changes made to your computer”, then a blank screen, and it cycles again from power-on. Continuously rebooting, for at least 8 hours.
F8 does nothing. I can’t get to the BIOS, and it won’t respond to any combination of CTL/ALT/DEL, ESC, ALT-F4, or any other key sequence I can think of.
I don’t think the hardware is damaged (it was working perfectly until the Win update), so I could probably remove the 1TB hard drive, wipe it out or replace it, and reinstall the OS and all the apps. Obviously this is a time consuming task, and if I have to do that, this unit might just end up in the trash. It would be a better use of my time to buy a new one (~$1200).
No recovery disks available. I think the recovery process is intended to be accessed thru a small partition on the HD, but I can’t get to it.
No serious personal data is at risk. I don’t store such data where Win 10 can get to it. I was in the middle of a 6 hour screen capture when the update process kicked in, so there’s no backup of this file. Not a great loss.
Pressing F11 to enter recovery mode does nothing. I don’t think it is responding to any keys, yet it’s unlikely to be a hardware defect; something in the update procedure disabled the keyboard.
Do you have a spare USB keyboard? If there’s something broken with the driver for the built-in keyboard, you might still be able to get to the BIOS via a USB keyboard.
Although it’s unlikely that the keyboard alone failed for no reason, your suggestion is worth a try. Yes, I can grab a USB keyboard from my junk box, but I don’t know if plugging it in will override the built-in KBD.
What do you mean “can’t get to the BIOS” The BIOS keypress is before F8 or any of that other stuff, usually a few seconds before booting. Del is the standard key, but other manufacturers may use a different one, Dell is F2. Look up the manufacturer and find the BIOS key. If it’s a custom build or non-major manufacturer, it’s probably whoever made the BIOS or motherboard.
If you need to reinstall the OS, that’s trivial and not really time consuming. It kind of sounds like you’re looking for an excuse for a new one?
Check the manufacturer’s website for the key stroke combination to get to the BIOS setup program. It’s usually something strange like Shift-F1 or some such. When you know the proper key combination, start pressing it repeatedly as soon as you power on. If you can get into the BIOS, you can change the default boot device to something you can get a clean boot from then troubleshoot the Windows problem from there.
A new unit would wipe out much of the work I put into configuring this one, so that is not my first choice.
This unit (“Republic of Gamers” says the signon screen) has an odd BIOS entry sequence, hold F2, press power, wait until something displays, then release the F2. That works, but the only boot option shown is the Windows Boot Manager, and there appears to be no way to select a USB drive for that function. Exiting the BIOS screen returns to the infinite rebooting sequence as before.
Reinstalling the OS may be trivial, and may be my only option now, but it will destroy any config data. And to install any OS will require removing or replacing the HD. If I do that, I will try to install Win 7 if the hardware supports it.
Have a look around in the boot manager. If you see an option that allows you to switch between UEFI and Legacy, change it to Legacy and have another go at the boot sequence.
I think that’s pretty standard compared to Dell. You’re pushing F2 at a specific time, and holding it to increase the chances of being that time. My go-to is to spam the key, as at least with older computers the keyboard would freak out if it had a key held down, and I haven’t bothered to stop what works.
Finding a USB boot option is probably buried in there, but available.
Why do you need a new HD? You mean because you don’t want to wipe the data?
I prefer 7 too, but conveniently enough it was just yesterday that I got the popup telling me that Win7 support ends soon and to upgrade to 10. You will potentially lessen security by not updating.
Not a dumb question. I didn’t know that. See below…
Since I have never received any support from MS for any OS, nor any upgrades, ever, I doubt if that frightful message will keep me awake at night. Forced upgrades are a much bigger threat, as this experience proves.
The boot manager offers no options. However, I didn’t have a bootable flashdrive in a USB socket, so that might be the next step…
I would prefer not wiping out the existing HD’s data, although 1TB disks aren’t expensive. But it looks like in order to get anything working at all, I’m going to have to start from square one, with a clean HD, since the existing one has an OS with problems that I can’t bypass. Might as well use a new one.