Windows 10 “automatic repair” loop

I was thinking about dual booting my Windows 10 machine with Ubuntu, however I couldn’t bring myself to. On my Ubuntu disk (DVD-R, in which I feared it was corrupted so I formatted it, then I was stupid and opened my Ubuntu ISO from 7-Zip, dragged them into my disk and hoped it would work), I selected “Try Ubuntu without installing” and it worked, However, the next day I tried it without installing it again and it spammed “could not mount /dev/sr0 on /cdrom: Invalid argument”. After that it put me in BusyBox and complained that there was “no medium that contained a live file system”. I thought it was just an error on the disk, but to my utter shock, upon ejecting it and attempting to boot into Windows, instead it put me into “recovery mode” and while booting into this recovery mode it told me “Preparing Automatic Repair”. Of course the first action would be to reboot. I rebooted around 5 times and no luck.I tried chkdsk /f, no result, tried sfc /scannow, again it couldn’t fix my PC, trying bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /rebuildbcd resulted in a “The system cannot find the file specified”. Trying to reset from the menu in recovery mode failed as well. I don’t have any restore points or disk backups either. What should I do?

Startup Repair is a Windows recovery tool that can fix certain system problems that might prevent Windows from starting. If Windows 10 fails to start correctly two or three times, then the automated Startup Repair system will be invoked.

Startup Repair can only fix certain problems, such as missing or damaged system files. It can't fix hardware failures, such as a failing hard disk or incompatible memory, nor does it protect against virus attacks.

You can run Startup Repair manually from Windows 10 installation media by opening the Windows Recovery Environment menu (Click Repair your Computer at the Setup screen if starting from installation media) and then clicking Troubleshoot and Advanced Options.



If Startup Repair is able to fix the problem, it’ll do so and you’ll be asked to restart the PC. If it isn’t though, perhaps because it’s unable to identify the problem, then you’ll be prompted and given the details of the log file it created during the repair process.




You will be shown the location and name of the repair log file if Startup Repair cannot fix the problem.

Clicking Advanced Options at this point will return you to the Windows Recovery Environment menu, where other repair options are available to you. If you open the log file, you’ll be shown details of all the tests performed by Startup Repair, with any errors discovered detailed. You can use this information to help diagnose and get to the root cause of the problem.



To open log file from the Windows Recovery Environment, click and open the Command Prompt. When the Command Prompt is open, type Notepad and press Enter key to open the Notepad application. The Startup Repair log file is located at:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

You will need to navigate to the drive on which you have Windows installed (usually the C: drive) to see the SrtTrail.txt log file.

FreeBooter said:

Startup Repair is a Windows recovery tool that can fix certain system problems that might prevent Windows from starting. If Windows 10 fails to start correctly two or three times, then the automated Startup Repair system will be invoked.

Startup Repair can only fix certain problems, such as missing or damaged system files. It can't fix hardware failures, such as a failing hard disk or incompatible memory, nor does it protect against virus attacks.

You can run Startup Repair manually from Windows 10 installation media by opening the Windows Recovery Environment menu (Click Repair your Computer at the Setup screen if starting from installation media) and then clicking Troubleshoot and Advanced Options.



If Startup Repair is able to fix the problem, it’ll do so and you’ll be asked to restart the PC. If it isn’t though, perhaps because it’s unable to identify the problem, then you’ll be prompted and given the details of the log file it created during the repair process.




You will be shown the location and name of the repair log file if Startup Repair cannot fix the problem.

Clicking Advanced Options at this point will return you to the Windows Recovery Environment menu, where other repair options are available to you. If you open the log file, you’ll be shown details of all the tests performed by Startup Repair, with any errors discovered detailed. You can use this information to help diagnose and get to the root cause of the problem.



To open log file from the Windows Recovery Environment, click and open the Command Prompt. When the Command Prompt is open, type Notepad and press Enter key to open the Notepad application. The Startup Repair log file is located at:

Code:

C:\Windows\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

You will need to navigate to the drive on which you have Windows installed (usually the C: drive) to see the SrtTrail.txt log file.

Upon attempting to navigate to the log file, I got as far as the logfiles folder, but couldn’t find the srt folder. I have Windows installed on my C: drive, but it said it was located on the D: drive, so I tried there, but it couldn’t find the system32 folder.

Make sure to run Startup Repair to create log file.

When computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assign any other drive letter usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be use to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

FreeBooter said:

Make sure to run Startup Repair to create log file.

When computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assign any other drive letter usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be use to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.

Thanks, I was able to read from the log if I did it from a Windows 10 installation disk.

Code:

Root cause found:
A hard disk could not be found. If a hard disk is installed, it is not responding.

Check BIOS setup utility to see if BIOS detects the hard disk drive.

FreeBooter said:

Check BIOS setup utility to see if BIOS detects the hard disk drive.

How do I do that on an ASUS BIOS?

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FreeBooter said:

Check BIOS setup utility to see if BIOS detects the hard disk drive.

Also, I have an SSD installed on my PC, not a hard disk. Does this matter at all?

• As soon as the computer starts booting up, press and hold down the F2 key on your keyboard. You only have a few seconds to press the key before the computer enters its normal boot process. ...
• Release the F2 key as soon as you see the BIOS screen.

Same process for SSD drive see if BIOS detects SSD drive.

FreeBooter said:

• As soon as the computer starts booting up, press and hold down the F2 key on your keyboard. You only have a few seconds to press the key before the computer enters its normal boot process. ...
• Release the F2 key as soon as you see the BIOS screen.

Same process for SSD drive see if BIOS detects SSD drive.

It boots into the BIOS as normal. I believe it has detected it as when I look at Main > Processor Information, I see P0:SATA SSD.

Let see if Windows 10 detects SSD execute Dir D:\ command and post the output of the command.

Please replace partition letter D: with Windows installed partition letter. When computer boots into Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) environment the drive letter assign to Windows partition may not be C: drive letter because Windows 7, 8 , 8.1 and 10 creates a separate system partition when it's installed from scratch. The system partition contains boot files WinRE assigns the system partition the C: drive letter and the Windows installed partition will be assign any other drive letter usually D: drive letter is assign to Windows installed partition. The Bcdedit /enum | find "osdevice" command can be use to find out the drive letter of the Windows installed partition the output of the Bcdedit command is similar to this osdevice partition=D:. The drive letter after partition= is the drive letter of the Windows partition.