Windows 10 1909 boots to blank screen with arrow

robynb1 · 22 Feb 2021

First off I cant bring up task manager to restart explorer... I wish it was that simple.

The computer boots normally but once windows starts to load it hangs at a blank screen with my curser and the spinning circle. I am not able to get to the login screen. No hardware changes have been made recently. I don't think any updates have installed either.

Prior to it failing to boot windows was in hibernate. when it came out of hibernate it was unstable the task bar kept reloading (explorer kept crashing and reloading I presume). I restarted and it seemed to be fine initially. tried starting outlook and a file was corrupt. tried running a repair on office then launched my browser. The system then crashed again and now wont boot into windows.

Windows has tried repairing the drive
I Have tried startup repair
I have tried booting into safe mode (same thing as windows)

My guess is windows is too far corrupted and will have to be reinstalled. I am posting to hopefully get a second opinion and maybe some suggestions on what else to try.

dalchina · 22 Feb 2021

Hi, I would suggest you first need to check your disk.

As you can't boot, one way is to boot your PC from a live boot disk if you have one, or can download and create one on another PC.

Alternatively remove the disk, place it in caddy, connect it to another PC and thus test it.

SMART param check- Crystal Diskinfo (free).

Great program- most informative comment I know right on its GUI- Hard Disk Sentinel (SSDs too).

No point reinstalling Windows on a failing drive, if indeed it is.

Have you been using disk imaging regularly as is so very often recommended by tenforums members? E.g. Macrium Reflect (free) + external disk for image files.

If so you can restore you system/disk/partitions to the state they were in when you created the image- even to a new disk.

For the future:
Crystal diskinfo can be set to run and continuously monitor your disks and alert you to degradation.
The very act of disk imaging is also sensitive to the integrity of the partitions imaged, so you will be alerted if there's a problem.

These can help you avoid future clean installs.

robynb1 · 22 Feb 2021

No smart errors from the drive
I have a marcium backup but its so old its not really worth restoring to it.

dalchina · 22 Feb 2021

Windows has tried repairing the drive

I assume that means e.g. chkdsk was run on restart- did it succeed?
You may not know, as getting the result requires reading the log from the event viewer, which you won't be able to do.

You could boot your PC using e.g. a Win 10 install disk, boot to a command prompt in Advanced Startup options and then run chckdsk /r
on the drive letter corresponding to your Windows partiiton.

If chkdsk fails, no point in continuing other than to recover data.

I'd get a second opinion from Hard Disk Sentinel if you can be bothered trying to fix this.

If chkdsk passes, then again if you have a restore point, you could try booting from a Win 10 disk to Advanced Startup options and run System Restore.

However, I think you'll end up having to recover what data you haven't already backed up and clean installing.

Lesson learnt, you can then start using disk imaging early in configuring your system and at appropriate intervals thereafter.
Note that the very act of disk imaging verifies the integrity of your disk content for partitions imaged.

robynb1 · 22 Feb 2021

dalchina said:

I assume that means e.g. chkdsk was run on restart- did it succeed?

correct. It claimed to have repaired files.

dalchina said:

You could boot your PC using e.g. a Win 10 install disk, boot to a command prompt in Advanced Startup options and then run chckdsk /r
on the drive letter corresponding to your Windows partiiton.

That I haven't tried... will be doing so shortly

dalchina said:

I'd get a second opinion from Hard Disk Sentinel if you can be bothered trying to fix this.

I had done both. no smart errors. health is at 95%. If I can fix this that would be the preference. I don't want to reinstall but from my experience its the likely option.

dalchina said:

If chkdsk passes, then again if you have a restore point, you could try booting from a Win 10 disk to Advanced Startup options and run System Restore.

No restore points (I did check that). I haven't seen that work for a long time.

dalchina said:

However, I think you'll end up having to recover what data you haven't already backed up and clean installing.

That's what i'm expecting. I have backed up the drive with Macrium so I have my data... mostly going to loose my open tabs which is going to hurt since none of it was bookmarked.

- - - Updated - - -

no luck with the disk check

- - - Updated - - -

So I tried a few more things

I tried running sfc against the install and got the error "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation"

I then ran dism and got "the wof driver encountered a corruption"

dalchina · 23 Feb 2021

Time to save time and clean install. Even if you got it running somehow, it sounds as if you could well run into problems. Question is, what's the underlying cause of the corruption?

robynb1 · 23 Feb 2021

Yup. That's what I finally did last night. Likely the cause is from when I initially built this computer. I was lazy and just plugged the drive into the new machine instead of installing from scratch. There was always odd things after that.