"Critical service failed" when booting after using netplwiz

Hi there,

I'm encountering a bsod with the error "critical service failed" whenever I power my computer on, and can't seem to get around it. I had just used netplwiz to disable the login screen, then restarted the computer to see if it had taken effect. There were no other changes made between this problem and the last time I'd rebooted.

I've tried booting into safe mode, but it just goes back into the start up repair menu.
The automatic start up repair fails to do anything, as does any sort of fixmbr or sfc /scannow, so I'm out of ideas!

I'm leaving for an international trip in a day, and was planning on connecting to this computer remotely while I'm away. I have very little time left so I'm quite desperate!

I really appreciate any advice or ideas relating to this. Perhaps there's a way to revert my changes in netplwiz? I opened the tool in cmd, but it didnt even list my user account there, just admin and guest.


Thanks in advance!
Ash



Oh, and I couldn't follow the instructions to upload the diagnostic zip, because I can't even boot the pc.

Hello Ashwhall and welcome to TenForums :)

Do you have System Restore Points set so that you can restore to a point before you made the changes? You should be able to get to System Restore from the Repair menu. See option 1 of the following tutorial: System Restore Windows 10

No, I sadly have no restore points set.

Okay, perhaps you should read through this tutorial and also check out the related tutorials to see if any of the alternative methods will work for you:

Sign in User Account Automatically at Windows 10 Startup

Hi Phil,

I went through the instructions you sent me and nothing has changed.

Do you know what critical service failed means? Is this some sort of driver error? If so, is there a way I can tell which driver it relates to?

Thanks!

There is not a lot of information in this BSOD code. Here is the entry:

Code:

The CRITICAL_SERVICE_FAILED bug check has a value of 0x0000005A.
This bug check appears very infrequently.

It indicates that a critical service failed to initialize while starting the last known good control set.

Normally a startup repair would fix this but you have already tried this. I was going to suggest an in-place upgrade repair but then realised you have to be able to boot into windows to do this.

I don't suppose you have a system image backup that you can restore from? If not, then you need a recovery disk. Try the following: Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk