Windows – How to force Windows 10 reset/recovery/repair with only partial boot

bootcrashformattinghard drivewindows 10

My son's Acer E5-551-T1PJ Windows 10 laptop crashed while playing Steam yesterday. Screen went black while gaming, rebooted, then immediately "No Bootable Device".

crash error

There's nothing important on it so now I just need to Reset Windows 10.

What I've tried…

  • Tried resetting from boot screen repeatedly (both options). Each time got to 80% then failed and reverted.

    Reset Running Reset Failed

  • Login screen tells me there's no saved restore points (even though there should be.)

  • If/when it gets as far as letting me login, Explorer.exe crashes immediately:

    Explorer Crash

  • There's no taskbar or start menu but hitting CTRLALTDEL and Task Manager slowly loads, and from there I can manage to get an elevated command prompt.

  • Task Manager says Disk Usage is at 100%, but only 0.3 MB/s is listed:
    Task Manager and EXPLORER.EXE error
    Task Manager (sorted by Disk Usage) Task Manager (sorted by Memory Usage)
    (Click to Englarge)

Memory Tests

I was finally able to run a Windows memory test (MdSched.exe at the command prompt) and a Linux memory test (from the GRUB screen)…

  • No memory problems found.

CHKDSK /F

  • Result: Failed to transfer logged messages to the event log with status 50
    CHKDSK C: /F
    (Click to Englarge)

Apparently this error means:

…there are corruptions or bad sectors in Windows partition
Run chkdsk c: /r /f /v to repair system partition.

(I began a CHKDSK /R before I found that, but looking at the docs I'm not convinced the extra switches will make a difference.)

CHKDSK /R

CHKDSK C: /R Bad Clusters Repaired (Click to Englarge)
CHKDSK C: /R

After about 8 hours it finished, and had found & repaired a few dozen bad clusters. I ran it again to confirm there was no problem.

…but it still won't reset. It gets partway done and then "has a problem" and reverts…

Windows Reset keeps failing

sfc /scannow

Finished Verification 100%, and then:

Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation

CHKDSK /R /F /X again

Attempt #3 powered itself off halfway through.
Attempt #4 is about 4 hours in:

chkdsk4

SFC /scannow

Verification 100% complete.
Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.

sfc

  • Any guesses at the diagnosis? Memory vs Disk?

  • Is there anything else I can try using only the command prompt, recovery menu, or Linux?

  • Will creating a recovery drive in a USB thumb drive have any more chance of working than already the failed Reset attempts?

…any other suggestions to save this poor single dad a few hundred bucks at the repair shop?!

Best Answer

UPDATE (Fixed)

As there are no answers for me to accept I figure I'll add my solution here.

After running CHKDSK /R /F /X repeatedly (felt like a million times, at 4 to 6 hours each time) there were eventually no more bad sectors found.

I formatted the drive with the startup options: img

...then (on another machine) downloaded the Windows Installation Media and saved it to a thumb drive.

I changed the boot order to boot from USB, where it installed Windows, and we haven't had a problem since.

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