Laptop seems to be in Recovery mode - what now?

RhinoCan · 19 May 2019

One of my laptops, which was working fine the other day when I last used it, seems to have encountered an issue overnight. When I got up, I found myself on a screen that said "Choose an option", which gives me the options of Continue, Use a Device, Troubleshoot, and Turn off your PC.

If I choose Continue, it tries to go on and winds up back on the same "Choose an option" screen. If I choose Turn off PC, it turns it off but on my next reboot, I just wind up back in the same spot.

Obviously, I need to choose one of the other two options but I don't know which one to choose or what to do when I'm in there. I haven't the foggiest idea what is wrong. I haven't seen any kind of BSOD or error message so I don't know where to begin to find out what's wrong.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

dalchina · 19 May 2019

Troubleshoot offers options like
System Restore
Command Prompt
Safe Mode
Startup Repair

- various repair options.

Do you routinely use disk imaging? You may have noted this is very very often recommended here, so you can restore your PC to a previous working state without technical help.

As to what has happened, could be disk corruption, a failed update, various other possibilities.

You can use a live boot disk to boot your PC and then use diagnostic tools to check your disk, for example.
That's what I'd do before attempting repairs.

If your disk is damaged, you might make things worse should you attempt fixing things should you need to recover data from it.

But hopefully you will have a recent backup.

You can find more by searching for
Advanced Startup Options

No guarantees on these I found:
Windows 10: Resolve startup problems with the Advanced Boot Options - YouTube
How to use Windows 10 Advanced Boot Options

Steve C · 20 May 2019

Also try removing the laptop's battery for a minute or so which clears the BIOS ad solves some boot issues.

zbook · 20 May 2019

The comments in the opening post match image #3 in this link:
Recover Windows 10 from a Recovery Drive
(Do not follow the steps in this link as it was only for the image)
or image #2 in this link:
Run Startup Repair in Windows 10

Dalchina commented on the troubleshooting menu options.

An additional option if available could be reset save files:
Reset Windows 10

This is a link for system restore:
System Restore Windows 10

This is a link for startup repair:
Run Startup Repair in Windows 10

This is a sequence to try:
1) startup repair
2) if startup repair fails then advance to system restore
3) start with the oldest system restore point and keep repeating as necessary to the most recent restore point
4) if system restore fails or if there are no restore points then advance to command prompt commands
5) command prompt commands can be provided if needed

If there was a problem related to windows updates then updates often can be uninstalled.
If there had been messages to perform a chkdsk then it can still be performed.

Use a camera or smartphone camera to take pictures and post images into the thread.