Win 10 can't boot or repair after interrupted update

I'm stuck in a worsening Win 10 situation, so will appreciate any advice. Suspect to be registry or Windows image corruption, but no longer have RegBack and having trouble with DISM.

Here's the sequence of events:

1) Laptop had very low disk space, but Windows still decided to download and auto-install an update.

2) Update was stuck on blue loading screen for hours, so I made the mistake of interrupting the update by turning off my laptop.

3) When I restarted, I got to the Win 10 logon screen but encountered the error: "User profile cannot be loaded" when I tried to sign-in.

4) Rebooted into safe mode, but got a black flickering Explorer screen.

5) So tried various troubleshooting:
- chkdsk ("Found no problems")
- sfc ("Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.")
- bootrec (fixmbr: successful. fixboot: "Access is denied". rebuildbcd: "Total identified Windows installations: 0")
- WinRE Start-up Repair
- renaming system and software to .001

(I have no restore points to use.)

6) Situation keeps getting worse. Previously I could reach the logon screen or use Startup Settings to boot into safe/other modes. Now I can no longer do either of this.

Also could previously use CMD in WinRE, but for some reason after using "net administrator /active:yes", I can no longer do so. Can only use CMD with Recovery USB now.

Laptop is just stuck in a loop where it can't boot, so WinRE is loaded, but can't repair itself, and only option left is to shutdown again.

7) I created a Win 10 Recovery USB and used the "Repair your computer" option, but same error as WinRE: "Automatic Repair couldn't repair your PC". (I looked into the SrtTrail.txt logfile via CMD and everything seems to have been completed successfully without error/root cause.)

8) Finally decided on the drastic option of resetting Win 10, but even that doesn't work: "There was a problem when resetting your PC. No changes were made."

9) Luckily my personal files look intact. (I used the notepad.exe workaround to load up Explorer via WinRE.)

So with the situation now, I hope to do 2 things:

A) Back-up all my personal files.
What's the best way to do this when I can't boot and only have WinRE? Is there a simple way to backup in WinRE?

B) Thereafter, fresh install of Win 10.
Is there a way to perform a repair where only the Win 10 OS files are updated? Any other DISM commands I can try? The usual "online" commands don't work as I need to use CMD on the Recovery USB.

Otherwise I'll try the "custom" install option using the recovery USB, but I don't know if that will work since I don't currently have the required 10GB disk space to proceed. Plan to delete some files using CMD after I back-up, but of course this adds complexity and risks...

Thanks for any advice!

A) Back-up all my personal files.
What's the best way to do this when I can't boot and only have WinRE? Is there a simple way to backup in WinRE?

copy and paste from booted media. It is easier if you have more advanced boot media so you can see what you are doing and use Copy To on the context menu.

you can borrow this, it is quite big and might take a minute to load when booted on a laptop
1904v3.iso

Is there a way to perform a repair where only the Win 10 OS files are updated? Any other DISM commands I can try? The usual "online" commands don't work as I need to use CMD on the Recovery USB.

you can try offline from booted media and point at the sick windows partition and the source for the repair files.

Dism /Image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:c:\mount\windows

if C: is the sick windows partition as seen from booted media, and c:\mount is the folder you have mounted the repair image into.

For example, mount ( or extract install.wim ) from the the win10 iso file.

Then create a new empty folder and name it something sensible like MOUNT. So you now have a folder c:\mount

Next mount the image from install.wim file into that folder.

DISM /Mount-image /imagefile:<path_to_Image_file> {/Index:<image_index> | /Name:<image_name>} /MountDir:<target_mount_directory> [/readonly] /[optimize]

DISM /Mount-image /imagefile:F:\sources\install.wim 6 /MountDir:c:\mount

then you can use c:\mount\windows as the source for the repair.

The letters might look diferent from booted media.

An iso containing pe.

Thanks all for your invaluable suggestions! Just need some clarifications:

SIW2 said:

you can try offline from booted media and point at the sick windows partition and the source for the repair files.

Dism /Image:C:\ /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:c:\mount\windows

if C: is the sick windows partition as seen from booted media, and c:\mount is the folder you have mounted the repair image into.

For example, mount ( or extract install.wim ) from the the win10 iso file.

Then create a new empty folder and name it something sensible like MOUNT. So you now have a folder c:\mount

Next mount the image from install.wim file into that folder.

DISM /Mount-image /imagefile:<path_to_Image_file> {/Index:<image_index> | /Name:<image_name>} /MountDir:<target_mount_directory> [/readonly] /[optimize]

DISM /Mount-image /imagefile:F:\sources\install.wim 6 /MountDir:c:\mount

then you can use c:\mount\windows as the source for the repair.

C: is where my sick Windows installation is on. Is this different from small c:?
D: is the Recovery USB I created from Microsoft.
X: is the drive Recovery USB boots into.

Is there a detailed article on how to perform the above DISM commands? Do you mean I need to use a file explorer to create a new "mount" folder in c: and extract a file from the Recovery USB into there? Getting confused with what I should type into the placeholders.

Try3 said:

You can add a portable version of Explorer++ to your Windows 10 installation USB and use it to browse around copying your files to another external drive.
- This would be much easier than the Notepad, File, Open ... method.
- You can run it using the command prompt.
- It's what I do.
Explorer++
- Note that making a new installation USB generally wipes all existing content from a USB, you can add other things to it afterwards.

This sounds great. Do I unzip the Explorer++ program files into the main directory of my Recovery USB, or can I create a New Folder?

In either case, what do I need to type in CMD to launch Explorer++?

dalchina said:

How? Using another PC (beg/borrow...) install e.g. Macrium Reflect or Aomei Backupper (free) and create its bootable disk from that program's GUI. Boot your PC from that bootable disk with another external disk (large enough) and thus create an image of your existing partitions with data present.

You can then explore those image files using file explorer and copy data from them when you need to.

Just to confirm I understood the steps correctly:

1) Install a bootable Macrium Reflect or Aomei Backupper onto a thumbdrive.
2) Boot up that thumbdrive.
3) Insert a large external disk into another USB.
4) Use thumbdrive to create an image and save to the external disk.
5) Use explorer to browse the image on the external disk.

After I repair Windows, can I try restoring this image back to my laptop?

After I repair Windows, can I try restoring this image back to my laptop?

No because that is an image of your sick system.

Do I unzip the Explorer++

you dont need that if you use the boot media I posted, which has explorer already built in.

hello mate, all you can do is to recover your files and do a clean format.. if that is a laptop then i recommend you to buy HDD Caddy and put your low disk HDD there so it won't go to waste and purchased SSD also and your SSD will serve as your main disk / OS...

we can't help much cuz basically we must not interrupt Windows Update when it is updating, depends on the situation if supply of power is shutting down on your area then it's not your fault.. since laptop has a battery, maximize it before planning on updating your windows.