MSI Notebook suddenly won't start properly?

I'm trying to help out a buddy of my, he's got this MSI notebook (probably has a recent version of Windows 10 like 21H1 or 21H2) that he's had for about 18 months. One day he goes to start it up and he gets this Automatic Repair screen "Your PC did not start correctly"; "Press Restart to restart your PC, which can sometimes fix the problem. You can also press Advanced options to try other options to repair your PC" I first tried Startup Repair but it said that Startup Repair couldn't repair your PC and then pointed me to a log file at "C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt" however when I go back to a command prompt and navigate to "C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles" and I try to "cd Srt" I get a message that the directory doesn't exist and if I do a directory of files all that's there is "Firewall", "SAM", "Scm", "WMI" and I checked and even if the directory was hidden I should still be able to get there with "cd Srt" and I did a dir command that should show hidden files but the Srt directory is simply not there. Next I tried to see if I could roll back to a previous restore point but it says there are no restore points. Next I tried asking it to start in safe mode and it still couldn't boot; then I opened a command prompt from the advanced options and did a "chkdsk C: /f /r" to check the disk and it appeared to complete without any problems

So I'm really stuck for ideas, if I can't find the log that Startup Repair creates how can I determine what the problem is that's preventing the OS from starting up? What else can I do to identify the problem?

To open the log file from the Windows Recovery Environment, click and open the Command Prompt. When the Command Prompt is open, type Notepad and press the Enter key to open the Notepad application. The Startup Repair log file is located at:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

You will need to navigate to the drive on which you have Windows installed (usually the C: drive) to see the SrtTrail.txt log file.



Please boot your computer with Windows Setup Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please type below command into Command Prompt and press Enter key.

The following command scans integrity of all protected Windows system files and repairs files with problems when possible.

Code:

Sfc  /Scannow   /OFFBOOTDIR=C:\   /OFFWINDIR=C:\Windows

Please replace partition letter C: with Windows installed partition letter. When the computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment, the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assigned any other drive letter, usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit | find "osdevice" command can be used to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition, the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Ok I found the SrtTrail.txt file and I've attached it but the upshot is multiple instances of "Root cause found: Startup Repair has tried several times but still cannot determine the cause of the problem." so I booted from a flash drive and used both bcdedit & diskpart and both indicate that the os drive is D: and then used "Sfc /Scannow /OFFBOOTDIR=D:\ /OFFWINDIR=D:\Windows" being the boot drive but I get the error message "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service"?

So no headway into identifying the cause of the boot failure.

There is not much can be done without knowing the cause of the boot problem, you should clean install Windows 10.

How to run the sfc /scannow command if Windows 10 does not boot
I went back over the instruction you gave for running sfc in the recovery environment and then checked out this page and their instructions were somewhat different than yours i.e /offlbootdir needs to be the system reserved partition which by default does not have a drive letter so you have to assign it one before you can run sfc, in this instance I assigned it the F: drive and used "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=F:\ /offwindir=D:\Windows" using this I got a different result this gives me "There is a system repair pending which requires a reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run SFC again". Does this help or mean anything is particular?

The instructions i have provided correct way to execute Sfc command.


Please boot your computer with Windows Installation Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please execute below command and reboot your computer to see issue resolves.

Code:

mkdir C:\scratch

DISM    /Image:C:\     /Cleanup-Image   /RevertPendingActions /ScratchDir:C:\Scratch

Please replace all of the partition letter C: with Windows installed partition letter. When computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assign any other drive letter usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be use to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Reboot your coputer and try SFC command again.

It would really help to see the output of:
diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
list part
list vol

NavyLCDR said:

It would really help to see the output of:
diskpart
list disk
select disk 0
list part
list vol

List Disk:
Disk# Status Size Free Dyn GPT
Disk 0 Online 1863 GB 0 B *
Disk 1 Online 953 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 14 GB 0 B

Disk 0 is a standard Seagate hard drive and is just setup as a data drive, disk 1 is the NVMe ssd and list part and list vol is as follows:
Partition ### Type Size Offset
Partition 1 System 300 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Reserved 128 MB 301 MB
Partition 3 Primary 952 GB 429 MB
Partition 4 Recovery 900 MB 952 GB

Volume ### Ltr Label FS Type Size Status Info
Volume 0 C DATA NTFS Partition 1841 GB Healthy
Volume 1 BIOS_RVY NTFS Partition 21 GB Healthy Hidden
Volume 2 D Windows NTFS Partition 952 GB Healthy
Volume 3 SYSTEM FAT32 Partition 300 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 4 WinRE Tools NTFS Partition 900 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 5 E ESD-USB FAT32 Partition 14 GB Healthy

Given the above in post #3, try:

Code:

diskpart
select vol 3
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter=s
exit
bcdboot D:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI

FreeBooter said:

The instructions i have provided correct way to execute Sfc command.


Please boot your computer with Windows Installation Media and from Windows Recovery Environment start the Command Prompt.

Please execute below command and reboot your computer to see issue resolves.

Code:

mkdir C:\scratch

DISM    /Image:C:\     /Cleanup-Image   /RevertPendingActions /ScratchDir:C:\Scratch

Please replace all of the partition letter C: with Windows installed partition letter. When computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assign any other drive letter usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be use to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Reboot your coputer and try SFC command again.

There was an error 23 during the dism revert operation, I've attached the log.

- - - Updated - - -

NavyLCDR said:

Given the above in post #3, try:

Code:

diskpart
select vol 3
format fs=fat32 quick
assign letter=s
exit
bcdboot D:\Windows /s S: /f UEFI

I followed these instructions and when I shutdown from the recovery environment and then tried to boot I got a blue screen with this message:

Code:

Recovery

Your PC/Device needs to be repair

The operating system co7ldn't be loaded because critical system driver is missing or contains errors.

File:\Windows\System32\drivers\msisadrv.sys
Error code: 0xc000000f