Stuck In Diagnostic Startup

Bizguy's solution helped me in that exact same situation, so many thanks. However, please allow me to mention one caveat. With the Creator's Update, the steps/options are no longer as Bizguy indicated in the original solution. Now one has to click troubleshooting and advanced options to finally reach a page with 6-7 options in which the 5th one is startup settings where one can choose to 'Enable Safe Mode'. (I'm writing from memory, so I might be a bit off, but that's the gist of it.)

Startup Settings was entirely missing from my advanced startup menus. Turns out, my computer needs a special driver to access the (SSD) hard drive. It was a big pain, but here's what I did. Maybe it'll help someone:

• I made a recovery USB stick on another computer (actually, I used a Windows install USB, which has recovery disk built in).
• Got my SSD's driver from computer manufacturer's site. I think it ended up being part of the "Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver", in my case. I was just spit balling and got lucky finding it.
• Copied driver installer to USB stick.
• Booted off the stick and open the recovery Command Prompt.
• Found the driver install exe (drive letters are all swapped around) and run it from the command prompt
• Then, I could see my actual hard drive. It's letter was F: instead of the usual C:
• Used bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy to enable the old-school f8 boot menu. Perhaps "{default}" will be a different identifier for some folks (you'll have to google it).
• Booted with F8, select Safe Mode, boot that way
• Opened msconfig.exe and disable Safe Mode.
• Restarted into normal mode.

That wasn't fun.

Everyone, please report the "missing login prompt in diagnostic mode" issue via the Windows 10 Feedback app. There's already an issue in there that you can up-vote.

Had the same problem.

I found the simple solution is to plug the internet into the computer using an ethernet cable. Then the login screen appears. (I had to press SHIFT and the power button on my laptop AND I had to have an ethernet to USB cable!)

I tried using a bootable usb windows 10 drive as well without success in finding safe mode I did see the option of restoring from a restore point and a new install.

Suggest everyone makes a provision for this sort of occurrence.

ENABLE SYSTEM RESTORE AND ENABLE THE F8 BOOT MENU OPTION

To enable the start-up boot menu option by pressing F8 do this....

OPEN command prompt as administrator and type:

bcdedit /set {current} bootmenupolicy Legacy

note, to undo above command (bcdedit /set {current} bootmenupolicyStandard)

=========Alternative==========
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu no

Now you can get to the old boot menu as windows starts

FunkMaster said:

I'm in this same jam but cannot find "Diagnosing PC mode"

power down machine. once it’s off, hold down shift key & hit power button. continue holding the shift key til windows starts. you should boot to the regular lockscreen & be able to login.

for alternate start options: press windows key + R. type msconfig & hit enter. on general tab are selective startup options. i wouldn’t suggest diagnostic startup with an active lockscreen.. that’s how i found this string .

for safemode, i found this nifty deal that describes multiple ways to boot to safemode: http://www.digitalcitizen.life/4-way...ode-windows-10

What a drama this is and how is it possible the Windows team could let something like this happen. I entered diagnostic mode using msconfig and I was locked into the users background screen and 3 buttons in the RH bottom corner 1. network connected indicator 2. options for keyboard 3. shutdown options . I found by a couple of hours experimenting winkey + p gives some screen options and nothing else. The computer did not have an option to boot from a USB so had to bring the computer home and put the ssd in another computer but my fix it disk could do nothing.
Came across this post and after a number of attempts at interrupting the start up I finally got it into the screen with some options and choose safe mode as described above finally got back to normal start up choose msconfig which was now in selective start up and choose normal start up. I use Linux on my servers and I guess I am biased to that OS but I just can not figure how an error like this can be shipped with an OS that, lets face it, is designed for users who don't have any tech skills. I guess it keeps a lot of sysadmins and techs employed.