How to exit System Audit Mode without CMD or Logging in

Op88 · 14 Aug 2017

My Windows 10 laptop won't boot from my USB sticks. I have 2 bootable sticks, one created via the official Microsoft Media Creation tool, the other one via Rufus. I tested both on another laptop and it was able to boot fine from them. I'm trying to trace back to what I did that could have screwed it up while I was trying to trouble shoot mind boggling installation issues and I've came to the conclusion that I screwed up by doing this (see below), and I'm wondering how to reverse it WITHOUT access to the Start menu or command prompt....I think i need to get out of System Audit Mode...I really didn't have much idea what I was doing, just trying to back track when everything went south so hopefully I could try to fix it...

Run C:\Windows\System32\sysprep\sysprep.exe
Change “System Cleanup Action” to “Enter System Audit Mode”
Click OK to reboot

A bit of back story if it helps:

I was trying to install Windows 10, it threw a Windows cannot complete this installation error.

So I googled for solutions and tried two typical solutions involving creating a user account in CMD, they didn't work so I googled further and

I ran into this article about messing with the System Audit Mode which I should never have. Because it made the problem worse, instead of just throwing an error that it couldn't complete installation, it goes right to the Welcome/Login screen, and when I try to log in it just gives the error "The specified domain either does not exist ". So I thought i should just forget about this whole Windows 10 thing and reinstall Windows 8.1 but then my laptop won't boot from them (Yes, I made sure they are booting from USB, not in safe mode, and the laptop does not have the option to change to/from legacy to UDFI(?) mode)

P.S the reason why I can't used CMD now after I have messed with the System Audit Mode is because I can't log in, Shift+F10 doesn't work anywhere, and the only other option via system repair is asking for the password for Defaultuser0 which doesn't exist...so I'm stuck in a loop.

Thank you in advance for your help.

NavyLCDR · 15 Aug 2017

How are you trying to boot from USB and what happens when you try it? The manual for the computer says it is the ESC key to use to get to the boot device menu when you first power on the computer.

Op88 · 17 Aug 2017

Thank you for your reply. I turn on my laptop, it loads the gray Asus start up screen with the option to hit F2 to enter the Boot Menu. I first tried changing the boot order from the default to USB first, then save and reboot, but the laptop just boot to the botched Windows 10. So I restarted and went into Boot Menu again and just did a boot override and have it boot from USB, same result. I also saw a few suggestions online involving turning off quick boot, I looked everywhere and didn't see such setting.