Windows Reset Not Visible

I have a friend's laptop - an Asus X551M, running Windows 10 v1903, build 18362.900. There is absolutely no indication of the OS on the chassis, but my friend tells me he upgraded it from Windows 8 about a year after he'd purchased it.

He initially wanted me to look at it because of the boot message he began getting about a month ago. He gets the Asus logo but before he gets to the logon screen to enter his password he gets the following message
Scanning and Repairing Drive (\\?\ SystemPartition) :100% Complete
When this message displays the percent is already at 100. It displays on the black screen for about 2 minutes before he gets to the password screen.

I ran chkdsk twice - neither found any errors. I ran sfc /scannow which found no integrity errors. A full scan of Malwarebytes was clean as was a scan with Adwcleaner.

There were so many problems with response time on the laptop that I thought the simplest thing was to do a reset. I used my Windows 10 disk and restarted while tapping the Escape key. I arrowed to the DVD and pressed Enter. It went through the same process of logo, scan and repair enter password. Nothing came up to show me I was booting from a disk.

I removed the disk and restarted, then pressed the power button again to shut it down. After the 3rd time I got the Preparing Automatic Repair screen. The only options were Troubleshoot and Turn off your PC.

Troubleshoot gives 6 options, none of which is Reset your PC. I've used this many times times to reinstall Windows but keep all user files. Is there some trick to have this display, or to to make the DVD, which I tested on another W10 computer and seems to work just fine, display that option?

Thanks for your response. I'm currently running a full scan with Windows Defender. It's up to close to 700K files, but the estimated time remaining never dips below 1:05;00. I'll try your suggestions when (if?) this thing ends.

- - - Updated - - -

Defender scan finally finished. Over 1 million files - it found 2 Trojans which were removed. Things are running better, but I stiil get that same Scanning and repairing msg as it boots.

I can get into msconfig, but I cannot click on anything on the boot tab. Can't add a timeout (field is currently blank).. Can't change to safe mode. The only things clickable on the boot tab are OK, Cancel and Help.

Samuria said:

As its at 100% straight away I am guessing its not scanning but the small boot parition which is very small that why it reaches 100% so fast

So what do I do about that?

- - - Updated - - -

dalchina said:

If you really need to reset the PC, here's how:
Reset Windows 10

However, you might wish to consider:
a. check how busy the task manager is showing resources to be when the PC is not responding.
b. whether all the information necessary to reinstall programs is available
c. whether there's any problem after a clean boot
d. performing an in-place upgrade repair install which keeps all progs and data.

For this you need a 1903 iso file, freely downloadable- see tutorial on downloading an iso file.

Which build and base language is your DVD, bearing in mind 1903 is installed?

No real change after clean boot. How do I determine that information regarding my Windows 10 DVD?

dalchina said:

Thank you for your reply.
Remember to perform the disk check just in case.
What your task manager shows could be instructive.
You perform an appropriate Google search and find e.g.
How to See Which Windows Version and Build is on a DVD, ISO, or USB Drive

Somewhat involved using the PowerShell, but it never actually brings up the version number. Or at least not a version number that corresponds to the version number displayed in the winver command. What is listed in the DISM tool tells me that the version on my DVD is 10.0.18362. As I already said in post #1, my Windows version is 1903, and my build is 18362.900. So if my DVD is the same as what's on my friend's laptop, why don't I get the Reset option when I click on Troubleshoot?

boweasel said:

why don't I get the Reset option when I click on Troubleshoot?

The tutorial is out of date. Reset is no longer an option in Troubleshoot.

To reset when booted into Windows -

Settings > Update & Security > Recovery > Reset this PC.

Try this first.

Otherwise -

If this is a retail license of Windows on a DVD, you can open the DVD and run setup.exe from the root folder.

This will allow you to do a repair install using an in-place upgrade, which reinstalls Windows but allows you to keep your personal data.

You'll be prompted for what you want to do.

If it is an OEM license DVD (computer came pre-installed with Windows and the manufacturer included the DVD), it will wipe your hard drive and re-install Windows to factory settings. Nothing will be saved.

So if you go the DVD route, make sure you know which license you have before proceeding.

You may need to download the 1903 ISO using either Rufus, the Heidoc or the TechBench websites, and burn it to a USB flash drive and use that to do a repair install using an in-place upgrade.

Do a disk image backup before making any changes.

X551MA specifications

Your disk has many partitions. As it came with Win 8.x there should also has a Factory recover partition to restore Win 8.x and a System partition. Both normally has no letters assigned to them.
On your fist post, every time you boot it runs a check disk on SystemPartition, that can be the Fat32 UEFI partition, that also has no letter assigned to.

Lets see what is on your disk.
Open Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc), expand the window and columns and take a snapshot of the whole window and post it here as an attachment.

As the laptop came with win 8.x and now has Win 10, it has a lot of trash, starting with useless partitions. I would make a backup of all data and do a Clean install, deleting all partitions and starting from a clean disk.