Windows 10 stuck on spinning dots during bootup

I upgraded Alienware Aurora Windows 7 to Windows 10 and everything was going fine.

Then one day my computer restarted by itself (I didn't see but I assume it was installing an update) and afterwards it will not boot up. Every time I try to boot I see the Alienware screen, then the Windows logo with spinning dots, then it goes to a black screen with spinning dots and never goes any further.

Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL or F8 or F4 does nothing.

I tried creating a USB boot drive in Boot Camp Assistant with a Windows 10 .iso that Microscoft support sent me a link to, but I still never get to a useful boot screen, it always gets stuck on the white dots.

I tried entering BIOS and changed the boot order from [1: RAID, 2: CD, 3: Flash] to [1: Flash, 2: CD, 3: RAID] but during boot it just says "CD priority boot... boot ready..." for a bit, then the same old spinning dots forever. I'm not sure if the USB boot disk created from Boot Camp Assistant is correct?

I've been on with Microsoft tech support 3 times and they basically have given up. They want me to take it into a shop.

Is there anything else I can try?

Hey there,

use Rufus to create a bootable disk and run startup repair from that. It is simply the best tool available - the one you are using might introduce problems.

I stumbled upon this simple solution for spinning dots that won't go away.

Turn computer off, then restart and press F12 to get the Boot Device Menu.
Select POST behavior. Select Fast Boot and set to [OFF] status. Save and exit.
Hopefully, your computer will continue to start up successfully. At least, mine did.

After rebooting a couple of times with Fast Boot [OFF] you can repeat the steps to turn Fast Boot back [ON].
Otherwise, every restart will be painfully slow.

With Fast Boot off, additional steps are taken to resolve compatibility issues. In my case, when the startup was complete there was a notification of a program that needed updating. Perhaps that update was not compatible with a Windows update?

If it is trying to do the Windows Anniversary update, there were several computers where I work that did the same thing. After a hard power off, they rolled back to the previous version.

This was really helpful, thanks! After hitting F12, I did not see an option for "Post behavior" but I just selected the first choice which was "boot manager" and it started, what a relief! After reading all the other comments of possible things to do, I was dreading the worst.

topdog said:

I stumbled upon this simple solution for spinning dots that won't go away.

Turn computer off, then restart and press F12 to get the Boot Device Menu.
Select POST behavior. Select Fast Boot and set to [OFF] status. Save and exit.
Hopefully, your computer will continue to start up successfully. At least, mine did.

After rebooting a couple of times with Fast Boot [OFF] you can repeat the steps to turn Fast Boot back [ON].
Otherwise, every restart will be painfully slow.

With Fast Boot off, additional steps are taken to resolve compatibility issues. In my case, when the startup was complete there was a notification of a program that needed updating. Perhaps that update was not compatible with a Windows update?

If you have ANY option to roll back to a previous non-anniversary build, use that opportunity. I can attest to this issue happening to me, but in my case, I let it spin and about 6 hours later, it finally booted up. Anniversary update is major, the system can reboot several times installing it. It deleted my AV program which the previous build had accepted, I didn't like that at all. Once I rolled back, everything was OK.

I tried win10 on my aurora r3 and crashed hard. I did a little research and everyone said my motherboard was incompatible with win10. Not sure what your system has, but i fresh installed win7 and disabled automatic updates to prevent another crash.

abeall said:

I upgraded Alienware Aurora Windows 7 to Windows 10 and everything was going fine.

Then one day my computer restarted by itself (I didn't see but I assume it was installing an update) and afterwards it will not boot up. Every time I try to boot I see the Alienware screen, then the Windows logo with spinning dots, then it goes to a black screen with spinning dots and never goes any further.

Pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL or F8 or F4 does nothing.

I tried creating a USB boot drive in Boot Camp Assistant with a Windows 10 .iso that Microscoft support sent me a link to, but I still never get to a useful boot screen, it always gets stuck on the white dots.

I tried entering BIOS and changed the boot order from [1: RAID, 2: CD, 3: Flash] to [1: Flash, 2: CD, 3: RAID] but during boot it just says "CD priority boot... boot ready..." for a bit, then the same old spinning dots forever. I'm not sure if the USB boot disk created from Boot Camp Assistant is correct?

I've been on with Microsoft tech support 3 times and they basically have given up. They want me to take it into a shop.

Is there anything else I can try?