No boot black screen, recovery c: access denied

Ok I have an HP 2000 Windows 7 to 10 upgrade. Customer stated she had a pop up that indicated she might have a virus then the machine rebooted and will not restart. Scanned with Kaspersky rescue CD and AVG rescue and it came up clean. Ran recovery from a Win 10 usb. No restore points available, Startup repair ends in black screen on boot after bios screen but before sign in. CMD prompt from rescue usb c: cannot be scanned as it states "Access Denied". Ran Hard drive test as well as MRI with no hardware failures. I have google the living crap out of this but I believe there is a permissions Issue on c: drive and I cannot find a way to repair it.

My guess is Ramsome-ware and the drive was encrypted and is locked by password

Kyhi said:

My guess is Ramsome-ware and the drive was encrypted and is locked by password

The only issue I have with that is that there is nothing to indicate a way to enter a password. The only partition with an issue is C: drive. I can access all the other drives from x: recovery. Went ahead and booted Linux mint 9 (runs on almost anything) and I am able to browse all partitions on the drive. I cannot see what the permissions are however. Also noted that c: is names Safe Mode? A virus might be at fault though I am sure there is a way to fix it. Can anyone tell me how to change permissions on a partition using the rescue command prompt?

Is a computer reset an option for you?

DustSailor said:

Is a computer reset an option for you?

as a last resort I will be formatting and clean installing Win 10. all other repair and refresh option end with error and I am sure it is because of permissions. I may try booting in Partition Wiz and see if it can tell me anything. Gparted seems to think the partition is ok without errors but cannot report permissions.

How far can you get? does it black screen just before login? [yes] If so, what happens if you leave it for a minute or so? BSOD, anything? I know of a number of computers that have black screens before login, but it is short-lived

You said:

If you can get to command prompt in the USB drive recovery environment, then try typing the following commands and pressing enter:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /RebuildBcd

cannot find os

DustSailor said:

How far can you get? does it black screen just before login? If so, what happens if you leave it for a minute or so? BSOD, anything?

left it run for 30 minutes and still no change. No hard drive activity either. The black screen occurs right after the HP logo and before the login prompt.