No boot after upgrade

RonNewYork · 01 Aug 2018

A neighbor of mine has a Windows 10 machine. There was an upgrade but (and she doesn't recall or know) either it completed or she interrupted it. In any event when she turned her computer on in the morning, she got this messaage: Start PXE over IPv4. When I got to her computer I disconnected the ethernet cable and rebooted. Now I get boot errors (oddly, the screen characters are in red not white). Anyway, from the BIOS setup I can did disk check and it was OK. I cannot add a boot device (no option to do so). My guess is that during the upgrade, the C: drive was renamed to X: but at the end of the process (which may have been interrupted; don't know), X: was not renamed back to C:. Does this make sense? I'm thinking the next step is to bring a WIndows 10 ISO on a flash drive and see if I can reboot from that and then, if it is X: and C: issue, use DISKPART to rename X: back to C:. Or is it more likely something else?

dalchina · 01 Aug 2018

Start PXE over IPv4

This means the PC has not seen any internal bootable disk and has proceeded to look for another boot source. In this case, for one over a network (yes, seems strange, but I've seen that on mine too).

So it may be that the system disk is corrupt or inaccessible, or that you need to change a BIOS setting.

I cannot add a boot device (no option to do so).

If you cannot manage to view the BIOS options to select a boot device, it may be there is a lower level hardware problem. That seems confirmed by

oddly, the screen characters are in red not white

You may well need to be able to access those options before being able to boot from an external disk, so if you can't, there may not be much you can do.

If you wish to prepare the bootable medium available from the top of the Software and Apps section here created by Kyhi, that gives you a Win 10 environment and a range of tools- a whole lot more useful than a Win 10 bootable installation disk.

Worst case: does your neighbour have backups and if not, is there data on the PC that needs saving? If you can't boot that PC by any means, that would have to be done by connecting disk(s) from the PC to another PC and then seeing if you can back data up.

And for anyone else who may respond- please complete details of the PC. (See my specs for comparison- click My computer below my post). Tutorial available if needed.

RonNewYork · 01 Aug 2018

Thanks. First the screen chars: Duh, loose monitor cable!!!! OK, still no access to the data. I'm making a bootable Ubuntu disk and seeing if I can boot from that. Won't know if this is possible until tomorrow.

dalchina · 01 Aug 2018

Well spotted. Hope you have some luck..

RonNewYork · 02 Aug 2018

Only choice was get a new computer and try to recover some of the data. The computer had 2 HDs in it. One, a 16GB SSD and the other a 2TB HD (Sata). Both were hosed. Could have been some kind of power issue? No way to tell. The SSD had the OS adn the 2TB data. We are trying to find a way to recover the day (the computer is owned by a neighbor of mine).

dalchina · 02 Aug 2018

Hmm, could be.

Ways your friend could protect themselves in future- you probably know- disk imaging (e.g. Macrium Reflect (free)), and a program to monitor the state of the disks such as Crystal Diskinfo (although the latter wouldn't help in the event of a catastrophic event of course).

You'll be familiar with progs like Recuva and this company's..
Active@ Partition Recovery restores deleted disks. Freeware Data Recovery Software Toolkit

However if the interface circuitry is damaged, then your options will be extremely limited.

RonNewYork · 02 Aug 2018

We've used Recuva before. It worked (mostly). We will set her up with a back up device and make sure she uses it. And that it's unplugged and put away when not being used. That's what I do. I have a large USB back up drive and some large usb drives I use, all off line most of the time.

zbook · 02 Aug 2018

Please post information about the computer: desktop, notebook, model, age, etc.
There is a "My Computer" section to place information about the computer in the thread:

System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums | Windows 10 Tutorials
In the left corner below in your post you find 'My System Specs'.
After clicking it you can find a link a little below that says 'Update your System Spec', click on this link to get to the page where you can fill in your system specs.
System Info - See Your System Specs - Windows 7 Help Forums

Include PSU. cooler, case, peripherals and anything attached to the computer by wired or wireless (mouse, keyboard, headset, printer, xbox, USB wireless network card, etc.)

When the computer is powered on what do you see and hear?

Run though these troubleshooting steps:

What is POST?
Computer POST and beep codes
POST troubleshooting steps

RonNewYork · 02 Aug 2018

Sadly, too late. That computer is no more. Just bare bones.