Windows Recovery Message

On my guitar studio PC, a Dell XPS Studio 9100 desktop, I found the screens ( 3 displays) frozen this morning, I previously had iTunes, YouTube and Chrome loaded. Could not do a soft reboot.

I powered off, waited and powered on, and now I get this message.



I seem to have ( at least) two possible paths out of this:

1) locate my bootable Windows 10 USB stick. Attempt to boot with it ( might require a BIOS setup change), and then look for recovery/repair options???

2) boot up with EaseUSToDo recovery CD and attempt to recover an image back up of the C drive.

Any advice on how to best proceed?

Try option 1 first. If it fails, no harm. If you have access to an operable PC - install Macrium Reflect Free and make a rescue USB/DVD/CD. Boot the problem computer with the Macrium rescue USB/DVD/CD and under the restore menu is a fix windows startup utility. That utility has worked often when all others have failed.

OK back in business. I was ready for a long drawn out process, but this time it worked out well.

5- 10 minutes effort:

• I started with the Windows USB stick ( as I found it first:) and plug it in).
• I rebooted, hit F12 and selected USB.
• It started as if it was going to reinstall Windows ( ie prompted for language, keyboard etc). I answered all the prompts.
• Then it asked if I wanted to Continue, TroubleShoot etc ; I selected Troubleshoot, and finally found a Repair option.
• It ran for a bit and said it could not repair.
• I then selected Continue, figuring I would get one more chance before it did a re-install.
• It then did the unexpected and I got what looked like the middle of a Windows Update ie, 70% done and Do Not Turn Off Computer. I let it continue.
• It then rebooted ; I pulled out the USB stick so it would reboot off the hard drive.
• And it did, all back to normal.
• Rebooted again to confirm.

Perhaps it was a 3 am update that clobbered it in the first place.

My new lesson learned is to shut down all apps when I am done. I do exactly that on my main PC, but typically do not on my guitar PC as I typically want to come back to where I left off.