SOLVED W10 not booting up

[jpk]

Powered up my machine this am and after post I get a blank screen with a flashing cursor. How do I get to anything short of installing W7 from my boot disc? I can't get to the desktop to do anything.

 

[Saltgrass]

If it is a blink cursor in the upper left of the screen that usually means the boot is being directed to an incorrect location and cannot find the boot files.

I would check the Bios setup and make sure the correct location is set as primary for your boot. If you have changed any drives or deleted any partitions it may be involved.

Other than that, what type of recovery media do you have? If you can get into the Recovery system, you may be able to run a Startup troubleshooter.

If all else fails, Windows 10 can be reinstalled without starting with an earlier OS. Download the install media for you system and install it the way you want. Once you get the install media, then you can use that to get into the Recovery system to see if it will help.

 

[Defender01]

I had that same problem.
You need to start unplugging any U S B things that are connected it will boot when you unplug the problem one.
Mine was my External hard drive.

 

[jpk]

Interesting. I was going to reinstall W7 since I still have that disc and just reformat the drive and install. I disconnected all my drives except for the C: drive. Booted the box and W10 loaded from the C: drive like there was no problem. Working just fine now on the C: drive. I will add the other drives now to see if it stays stable. Man am I happy about this.

Defender01, I did this before reading your post. Thanks for the advice. Seems like that might have worked as well.

 

[Trouble]

Very interesting.
In fact I would be interested in knowing if in both your cases it involved external USB hard disk drives and if so....
The particular Manufacturer Name and Model Name and Number as well as if they were externally powered by a AC adapter or depended solely on USB for their power?

 

[jpk]

Very interesting.
In fact I would be interested in knowing if in both your cases it involved external USB hard disk drives and if so....
The particular Manufacturer Name and Model Name and Number as well as if they were externally powered by a AC adapter or depended solely on USB for their power?

I had no external HD connected via USB or otherwise. The only devices I had/have connected via USB were/are my keyboard, mouse, printer and wifi dongle. The only thing I had done differently was I turned my box completely off last night. Usually I just leave it on and it goes to sleep after several minutes.

 

[Trouble]

I disconnected all my drives except for the C: drive. Booted the box and W10 loaded from the C: drive like there was no problem. Working just fine now on the C: drive. I will add the other drives now to see if it stays stable. Man am I happy about this.

So the drives that you disconnected were internal drives??
And that seemed to remedy the problem you were having?

 

[jpk]

So the drives that you disconnected were internal drives??
And that seemed to remedy the problem you were having?

Yes. I've since reconnected all the drives and all is functioning normally.

 

[Trouble]

Even more interesting.
So maybe Saltgrass was on to something when he mentioned....

If it is a blink cursor in the upper left of the screen that usually means the boot is being directed to an incorrect location and cannot find the boot files.

Maybe for some reason the system was just not enumerating the drives properly.

 

[jpk]

Even more interesting.
So maybe Saltgrass was on to something when he mentioned....

Maybe for some reason the system was just not enumerating the drives properly.

Well, while I thought my system was ok, I left it to boot up for dinner and when I came back, same issue as before. Blinking cursor in the upper left corner. I once again removed all drives except the C: drive and I was able to regain the desktop again. So I am online right now and I was thinking of trying a system restore but it is stored on another drive. I will have to shut down once again and connect the drive that has the restore copy on it. I hope it works.

 

[Defender01]

May be worth trying a drive error check.
Mine was the external drive and after doing check for drive errors it found the errors and sorted the problem.

 

[jpk]

May be worth trying a drive error check.
Mine was the external drive and after doing check for drive errors it found the errors and sorted the problem.
View attachment 2474

I ran error checking and it found some errors. Evidently it corrected them. It didn't specify what the errors were just that there were some. Seems to be stable right now. Still a little spooked about turning the thing off to connect the other drives.

 

[Defender01]

Yes i found it corrected the errors but didn't give any info.
But as long as things are working i didn't mind.

As for being spooked about turning the thing off to connect the other drives there is no better time than the present.
PS have you done a error check on all drives.?

 

[jpk]

I have not performed EC on the other drives because I have not reconnected them yet. I will need to power down to do that. What I will probably do is install a drive one at a time, do the EC on it then shut down and install the next. I have four drives on my box right now. I do have a 1TB drive that I had installed a long time ago that gets a S.M.A.R.T. warning when I had it connected upon boot up. I wonder if I can perform a EC on it? Hate to lose a drive since it is 1TB but I believe it may be bad. It does spin up and I can feel the heads moving.

 

[Trouble]

It didn't specify what the errors were just that there were some

Yes i found it corrected the errors but didn't give any info.

Running Check Disk from the command prompt will produce an event log that you can look at in event viewer, just search windows logs, application logs, for "chkdsk". I assume that running it by means of the drive properties, tools tab would create a similar event log for you to examine, to see if it was just a matter of errors in the volume bitmap, or perhaps some KBs in bad sectors.

 

[Defender01]

Yes i would only install one drive at a time doing a EC on each drive.
if you suspect its the 1 TB drive that's causing the problem boot up with that one not connected if all is well boot up with the 1 TB drive and see if that is causing issues.

 

[jpk]

I currently have four drives in my box. The C drive is a 1tb drive, I also have a 3tb, and two 500mb drives. The second 1tb drive that has the SMART issues, I haven't had in my machine for a long time. Just thought I'd try to see if the little rest it had would help cure its issues. I won't be back home until this evening. I will start to install the remaining drives when I return.

 

[jpk]

I have returned home and have one by one reinstalled the remaining drives and had run EC on them. All came back quickly as clean and no errors. Ghosts in the machine.

 

[Defender01]

I ran error checking and it found some errors. Evidently it corrected them. It didn't specify what the errors were just that there were some. Seems to be stable right now. Still a little spooked about turning the thing off to connect the other drives.

Perhaps this was the fix if all has been o/k since.

 

[jpk]

I'm going to run EC once again on the C drive to confirm the errors were corrected as well.