Boot Usually Fails with Black Screen

Windows 10 Pro, [Version 10.0.19043.1288], sfc and dism system checks OK. I rarely reboot my machine, a habit from years of making long runs lasting many weeks or even months. When a WU comes that requires a reboot (think Update Tuesday), it nearly always hangs on boot. I find that the same thing happens when I reboot for any reason. Process:

• Takes a long time to shut down,
• UEFI Bios loads, gives me a chance to change the boot priority and such, then boots the Windows bootloader,
• Takes a long time to get to the light blue screen, then
• Goes to black screen.

At this point, one of two things happens: the desktop background comes, on, gradually populated by the widgets that make the lock screen, OR, the black screen remains forever, with the monitor turned off. Recovery is to power down the motherboard and power back up. Sometimes it takes a few tries, but that usually does it.

Sometimes, powering off and on doesn't bring it back. Then, I boot to a recent Windows 10 Rescue Media thumb drive and ask it to repair the boot sequence. It declares failure, but it will boot to the lock screen if I select "Exit to Windows."

I decided to try running bootrec to fix things. I used the simple way to get to Windows RE, Start -> Settings -> Update and Security -> Recovery, then, under Advanced Startup, select Restart Now. I got a strange message, something like "Making changes, computer will turn off when complete" and that's what it did. I powered off and on and booted to rescue media and asked to repair boot sequence, the selected exit to Windows.

Later this morning, I booted to Windows RE through the Start menu and tried to run bootrec. I got:

• bootrec by itself brings up the brief help file, showing that bootrec is there.
• bootrec /fixmbr gives the error "file not found"
• bootrec /fixboot gives the error "file not found"
• bootrec /rebuildbcd gives the error "Windows systems found: 0"

I exited to Windows and it booted OK, as it does from Windows RE on thumb drive. I have not yet had time to boot to rescue media and try bootrec again. I'm making a new rescue media, and it's taking all day and into the evening.

Any suggestions on how to fix my boot? I'm going to try booting to rescue media on thumb drive and try running bootrec that way. Any suggestions on how I can fix my \\Rescue partition?

Hello Motorfingers,
If you have access to another PC install Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect and make a MR Rescue USB.

Then boot from the MR Rescue USB on this computer and try the option to repair boot problems.

If you don't already make image backup, Macrium Reflect is a great tool for that.

Another thing I would do is run "powercfg /h off"
to disable Windows hibernation and fast startup if the problem comes back after you fix it with Macrium Rescue USB.

steve108 said:

Hello Motorfingers,
If you have access to another PC install Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect and make a MR Rescue USB.

Then boot from the MR Rescue USB on this computer and try the option to repair boot problems.

If you don't already make image backup, Macrium Reflect is a great tool for that.

I do have an old laptop that I've kept up-to-date and has the same build of Windows 10. But it has the exact same problem, since the last WU or two. I do have a DVD with Windows 10 build 2004 on it that I've used in the past. It should run bootrec OK.

The new recovery thumb drive is finished, and I might try it with that one, even though it's from the workstation that has the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

booted to the new media and bootrec didn't work. Booted over to an older thumb drive and again bootrec didn't work. Booted over to a CD-ROM rescue media from Windows 10 v1903 and got /fixmbr and /fixboot to work, but /rebuildbcd could not find a device (HD?). Also, reagentc.exe was missing, and I couldn't find winrecfg.exe. I did get "wmic recoveros set autoreboot = false" to run but bcdedit complains about a missing device. Booted over to a Macrium Reflect DVD from August and ran its boot repair, and it seems to have rebuilt the bcd. But, on restart, it died with a black screen as ususal, and I had do power off to recover.

It's pretty clear that I need a new recovery partition, BCD, and all the pointers corrected.

The only thing about my physical configuration that might be a problem is that my C: drive is drive 1, and a data disk is drive 0. I could switch the jacks that the SATA cables plug into to make C: drive 0, but I never felt the need to do that because the BIOS and Windows seem to not have a problem. But, wmic might not have the same tolerance for which SATA channel that things are on.

Completely power-off the computer.
Disconnect all drives except the drive containing Win 10.
Restart and enter the bios and reset it to the default settings then see if operations are normal.
If not,try a repair install and should that not be successful,then a clean install is recommended.

Did you try my earlier suggestions to turn hibernation off?

Making boot drive SATA 0 is simple enough to do.

Check all drives health with HD Sentinel app.

Is the BIOS and drivers up to date from PC manufacturer website?

steve108 said:

Did you try my earlier suggestions to turn hibernation off?

Making boot drive SATA 0 is simple enough to do.

Check all drives health with HD Sentinel app.

Is the BIOS and drivers up to date from PC manufacturer website?

This computer never had hibernation enabled. I did heed what you said and applied it to my laptop, though. I have HD Sentinel and look over all four disks whenever I boot. The motherboard has the latest BIOS. The video card is the only card in the computer and it is maintained by GEForce Experience, which gives me last night's game hack for every new game that is hot at the time (I don't have any games installed).

This computer was originally built in 2013, with Windows 7 installed on it. After Windows 10 was installed on it, problems began to accumulate, and I have done a full installation of Windows 10 (keeping my files), cleaning out just about everything except that my //Recovery partition was the second one, not the last partition, on my system drive. I used Macrium Reflect to fix that some months ago because rebooting after Update Tuesday usually resulted in hanging on reboot. But, nothing has improved, and in the last few days, I have found that the real problem is the BCD and associated files and pointers.

The computer has always had the extra HD as Disk 0 and the system disk as Disk 1. I thought that I fixed that when the motherboard was exchanged on warranty in 2014, but it turned out that the system drive is still Disk 1. I don't think that trading the jacks on the motherboard at this late date will help. Unless someone knows of that causing a problem, I would like to leave the hardware alone.

Turn On or Off Fast Startup in Windows 10 thanks for the update. If
Fast Startup is on, turn it off please and see if it fixes the problem.

joeandmarg0 said:

Completely power-off the computer.
Disconnect all drives except the drive containing Win 10.
Restart and enter the bios and reset it to the default settings then see if operations are normal.
If not,try a repair install and should that not be successful,then a clean install is recommended.

One of my HDs has a UEFI boot point installed by Acronis to allow recovery of the system disk without an Acronis rescue disk. It's not on the same disk as my system disk and my BIOS has no problem distinguishing them. When running on my //Recovery partition with Windows RE, I find my data disk is C:, my system disk is D:, and the system utilities find Windows 10 OK. But, bcdedit.exe and reagentc.exe are missing!

Today I downloaded Microsoft's Windows 10 media generator and made a rescue thumb drive and a rescue DVD, which is tight s a tick, but there seems to be a complete Windows 10 21H1 rescue/install media on it. I also have a rescue/install thumb drive with the same build. I'm thinking that perhaps I will copy some files from one of these to my //Rescue partition.

I'm thinking that a repair install from one of the 21H1 rescue media is the answer. I'm waiting to see whether someone here will have a less drastic solution, and I am not in a position to risk the use of the computer for a couple of weeks because of an ongoing project with a deadline in mid-November. After that's done, I'll do the repair install.

After you try my previous suggestion, my next suggestion is repair-install too.