Win 10 Pro Dell T3600 Won't Boot to Desktop, Goes To Advanced Recovery

Computer was running fine. Thought I would run a scan on my SSD drive. So I made the mistake of right clicking on my SSD drive with the Win 10 Pro OS, selecting properties, and then Scan. It immediately went into a scan and repair loop always ending at Automatic Repair screen.

I tried the normal tricks like bcdedit /set GUID recoveryenabled No but it stayed Yes anyways and wouldn't work on reboot. I eventually removed the right RAM module top break out of it and it now goes straight to Automatic Repair screen.

I did a chkdsk /r and after five hours it finished successfully, no problems found on disk. Did a sfc /scannow and it verified 100% finding no problems.

System Restore failed. So I ran a copy e:\windows\system32\config\RegBack\* e:\windows\system32\config as my Windows directory is on the e: drive. Copied find but on reboot straight back to Automatic Repair screen.

Ran bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
"Successfully scanned Windows installations. Total identified Windows installations: 0 The operation completed successfully."

Ran bootrec.exe /fixmbr
"The operation completed successfully."

Ran bootrec.exe /fixboot
"Access is denied."

I'd like to do an inplace upgrade but can't boot into Win 10 to run it. Any ideas?

FYI, I tried Startup Settings and choosing 4 on reboot but it doesn't boot into safe mode just cycles back to the Automatic Repair screen again.

SSD's (normally) do not require any maintenance like a "hard" disk drive does. Scan should not be run on them.
From your description it appears to be corrupted to the point a reinstall will be required. I don't think there is a Dell recovery partition on the commercial line PC's, thus it will either have to be restored from a complete drive backup (disc image) or reinstalled from scratch.

Just in case it does have the Dell recovery, here is the procedures:
How to restore the Dell factory image with Dell Backup and Recovery | Dell US

Try Dell's pre-boot diagnostic. I have an older Dell Inspiron 580 desktop: pressing F12 upon startup or restart gives the opportunity to select Diagnostics and one of the first things it checks is the HDD.
--- Is it your original drive from Dell?
--- If so they might have an SSD diagnostic tool for it.

I called Dell. They said there was no SSD diagnostic tool and the pre-boot diagnostic won't help. They said the only solution is to system reset clean (lose all apps and all files). I asked them why they didn't disable the ability for us consumers to select an SSD drive, right click on properties, and left click on scan thereby hosing the hard drive so that only a destructive system reset is required. Long pause. Must be Microsoft's job I guess in their opinion. Never ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, use scan and recover feature on an SSD drive with your Win10 on it or you will be in my position: hosed!

MeAndMyComputer said:

Try Dell's pre-boot diagnostic. I have an older Dell Inspiron 580 desktop: pressing F12 upon startup or restart gives the opportunity to select Diagnostics and one of the first things it checks is the HDD.
--- Is it your original drive from Dell?
--- If so they might have an SSD diagnostic tool for it.

"They said there was no SSD diagnostic tool"
--- Interesting.
--- I have a Crucial SSD from the Vista days and it runs fine on my HP Win10 Pro
--- Even though I wasn't having any problems with it, last year I ran Crucial's Storage Executive just to see what it reports.
--- No problems were found and it was interesting to know it was available.

On "the pre-boot diagnostic won't help." it doesn't surprise me but at least it's known now.

Anyway whatever new HDD or SSD you use, determine whatever diagnostic utility the mfg. has in mind for future purposes.

The Dell T3600 is a "Precision" workstation. Not a consumer model, such as the Inspiron or XPS lines. The business line does not have the recovery partitions and diagnostics like the consumer line. Many times these are sold without OS as the commercial company has their own licenses and IT department for support. However, it does have the "PSA" (Pre-Boot Assesment) embedded in the BIOS.

Update: Alrighty then. So I...

1. Bought a new Western Digital (the higher priced black box not the lower priced blue box) 3.5" SATA hard drive (I'm not a fan of SSD after this) and installed it.

--> Note that the end of the ribbon cable from the PERC H310 Raid Controller Card is Raid 0 and the one second from the end is Raid 1 for the Dell T3600 configuration. The system shipped with one drive on Raid 0 (the OS drive) and one drive on Raid 1 (the data drive). I used Raid 0 and did not install a second hard drive.

--> Note on the PERC H310 Raid Controller Card you cannot mix SSD and SATA drives on the same Raid channel (0 or 1). So if you are using Raid 0 channel then all drives on Raid 0 channel must be the same type, same for Raid 1 channel. You can have SSD on Raid 0 and SATA on Raid 1 though but not mixed on the same channel.

2. Booted into the PERC H310 raid controller (Ctrl + R) and setup a virtual drive from the physical disk on Raid 0 (last connector on the ribbon is Raid 0, second to last is Raid 1) using defaults. This allowed the disk to be recognized on reboot as 1 virtual disk found. Then I went back into the PERC raid controller once I saw it found the disk and started the initialization of the disk to make it usable for Windows which took a couple of hours to finish. Afterwards, I had a usable new hard drive on the Dell T3600.

3. Next I downloaded and used the Dell OS Recovery Tool at How to Download and Use the Dell OS Recovery Image in Microsoft Windows | Dell US typing in the computer's service tag when asked for it. This is how I created a USB thumb drive I could boot from (F12 and select UEFI USB). I reinstalled the original Windows 7 Pro OS from it.

-->Note, I didn't have to provide the NIC driver but if you do then go to support.dell.com and type in your service tag to access drivers.

-->Note, I did not get prompted for the PERC driver either as the hard drive came right up allowing me to install Windows 7 to it. Be sure to initialize your newly created virtual drive in the PERC utility or it will not be recognized by windows and you will then be prompted for a PERC raid controller driver which does no good as Windows cannot use the drive until the Raid controller initializes it for use.

4. With Windows 7 Pro installed successfully and automatically activated (you don't have to enter a license with the Dell OS recovery tool), I used the Windows 10 Media Creation Tool Download Windows 10 to upgrade Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro. The upgrade was free and Windows 10 automatically activated.

5. Then I flashed the bios as I was two updates behind. I simply downloaded and ran the latest bios update for my computer verifying in Windows 10 system information that it was successful (Start, All Programs, Windows Administrative Tools, System information).

6. Then I loaded up Novastor PC Backup and successfully recovered all of my data back to its original locations (My Documents, etc...).

-->Note: My data was also on the second Raid 1 drive in the system if I didn't have a backup but I'm only using one hard drive going forward and had a full data backup that was only two days old.

7. Then I reinstalled all my applications. This took some work running down all the licenses and software images online because I had been lazy and not created a Belarc Advisor report saved to pdf in a separate location in the event of an emergency. I'll spare you the details of all the phone calls I had to make except to say you can avoid this problem by recording your software licenses in a safe place away from your computer drives so that when (not if) they fail you don't lose that information.

8. With everything reinstalled and working properly, now I need to schedule a brain transplant. Does anyone know a good brain surgeon?