Computer Won't Boot | Spinning Circle Starts Briefly, Then Stops

I ran Windows Update today on a Windows 10 Pro computer. When it restarted to apply the updates, it wouldn't boot. The spinning circle appears for a split second, then it stops. And that's as far as I can get.

I restored two different system images, and they completed successfully, but the computer still has the same problem.

I pulled the SSD out of the computer and plugged it into another computer and ran some tests on it, and they all passed. I also ran a chkdsk /r. No problems found. Hard Disk Sentinel and CrystalDiskInfo both say it's healthy.

It gets the single BIOS beep which usually indicates that everything is OK, but I went in and reset everything to defaults. Still no good.

I also did a Memtest86 test. All good.

Any ideas?

Thanks all.

Disconnect he drive which does not have the Operating System on it and ensure the bios recognizes and will boot from the only connected drive.
Does the problem still occur ?

joeandmarg0 said:

Disconnect he drive which does not have the Operating System on it and ensure the bios recognizes and will boot from the only connected drive.
Does the problem still occur ?

Thanks for your suggestion, joeandmarg0, but it made no difference.

I'm pretty sure that's it's seeing the correct operating system drive as you wouldn't be able to see the Windows 10 spinning circle otherwise.

I've since done a CMOS reset and loaded optimized defaults using the Clear CMOS button on the back, but it made no difference.

Try3 said:

If you were restoring the image of the entire OS disk then I think
- You had a BIOS update not just a Windows update and it's that Bios update that has gone wrong, or
- You originally installed Windows with more than one internal disk fitted and it put some necessary Windows partitions on one of these other disks i.e. your Windows system image restorations have only been partial restorations.


If the startup repairs you are trying [see your other post] do not solve the problem then I suggest you do this - it is not as drastic as it sounds so do read the whole thing.
1.1 Boot from your Windows InstallUSB / Macrium boot disk / similar and rescue any of your own files that had not been backed up when the problem occurred.
1.2 Boot from your Macrium boot disk and make a new system image.
2 Remove all other disks but the one you want for Windows.
3 Reinstall Windows.
4 From your existing system images, restore just the C:\ drive to the C:\ drive of your new installation.
5 Refit all other internal disks.
You'll be back to where you were before the problem started.


Best of luck,
Denis

The startup repairs have been performed a few times without requiring Windows 10 boot media.
Would booting from Windows 10 media and performing startup repairs be any different to what has already been performed a number of times?

Thanks, Denis.

I'll let you know the outcome when I get around to it all.

The log file created by Startup Repair can help to find out the cause of the boot problem. In this video, i will explain how to use the Startup Repair tool to troubleshoot boot problems in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

FreeBooter said:

The log file created by Startup Repair can help to find out the cause of the boot problem. In this video, i will explain how to use the Startup Repair tool to troubleshoot boot problems in Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Thanks for that, but there is no SRT folder.

I'm really thinking it's a hardware issue.

Is it possible for an SSD to fail even though chkdsk /r, Hard Disk Sentinel and CrystalDiskInfo say it's healthy?
All my system image restores all successfully complete, so if it was the SSD, I would have thought there would be problems restoring images to it.