Laptop trouble - my drive letters changed?!  

I finished work yesterday and shut down my laptop normally. It's a HP Omen 15-dc0020nr. I have Windows 10 Professional on it, but I am unsure which version - had to shutdown automatic updates completely since my work demands me to be available immediately, something Windows Update does not allow often with automatic installs that prevent me from accessing the system. If it is possible to access a certain file from DOS to discern exact windows version, please advise.

Came back home and tried to turn it on, Omen logo came up, and laptop immediately shut down. After a couple of tries, I got the Preparing Automatic Repair message and the computer entered the Automatic Repair where I can go to Advanced options. From there I tried Troubleshoot/Advanced options and went for Startup Repair, which did nothing. I tried entering Safe mode from Startup Settings, to no help - crash again the moment Windows should start booting.
I tried entering the BIOS and changing boot order, but it is not possible since I choose OS BOOT MANAGER, USB DISKETTE, USB CD/DVD, Network adapter. No hdd or ssd options.
I tried System Restore, and had a restore point from yesterday where I could attempt it, but after it was done, it did not help again. After that I could no longer attempt it - I see restore points, but selecting any of them gives me warning "You must always restore the drive that contains Windows". This confused me so I went back to Advanced options where I can access Command Prompt.

Now, I noticed something rather important. My system is on my SSD drive which is now D: for some reason, while my HDD drive is C:.

Other options available to me are System Image Recovery and Reset this PC. I also used Windows Image Creation Tool to create a bootable USB but running Windows Setup from it and choosing Repair option also did nothing.

I need to repair the computer urgently so please any help will be more than welcome.
I also need to backup my files obviously, so please, anyone, let me know is it possible (and how) to safely transfer my User folder to an external HDD or something...through DOS?! I don't have anything else available to me. I feel this will end with me reinstalling windows, but I seriously need to save my files.

dalchina said:

Presumably this is from an offline command prompt - drive letters may well not be the same as when viewed from with Windows.

I went through as you said: I'm in the Hiren which I created through Rufus. Works fine.
I used the Crystal Disk Info as suggested, but it shows health of both drives as Good, where SSD is shown as Good (99%) whatever that means.

Still, both Hiren windows explorer and Crystal show reverse drive lettering - hdd is shown as C:, while SSD (where my system is) is shown as D: for some reason.

As for your suggestions regarding backup and windows update: well taken to heart. Both are my now top priorities as soon as I get my system back.

In the meantime, I will start manually copying important stuff from my system drive just in case, namely my USER folder.

Any tips how to proceed now?

I ran the Macrium, entered the path as c:\windows (it didn't automatically detect it), but it did detect that it should be on my "Disk 2 - INTEL SSDPEKNW512GB 002C. A small popup came up:
EFI partition found on disk 2 (green checkmark)
Removing old BCD (green checkmark)
Creating BCD for C:\Windows (green checkmark)

a popup came up asking for restart, I confirmed. It turned of Macrium, did not go to restart, did it manually, removed my USB to prevent Hiren boot.

BSOD comes up, your PC ran into a problem needs to restart.
Comes back to Recovery, with options: enter recovery environment, check startup settings, go to UEFI firmware settings.
It's a no.

Anything else comes to mind?

Well this will require getting my hands dirty. Ok, get back to you after I pry this PoS open.

dalchina said:

Camera for screenshot?

here you go:


note: I named my drives HDD and SSD