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W10 not starting at all (outside WinRE). What do I do next?

Anonymous
2024-03-20T23:52:10+00:00

Okay, so I've had a laptop for many years now preinstalled with Windows 10 Home, but just last week it developed a system startup failure, for the third time in 4 months (aka. a frequency of every 2 months, for those aware of fencepost errors) and this time is definitely worse than the last. Am I looking at a potential hardware failure (e.g: HDD dying) or...?

The bad news is:

* Windows 10 will not boot (except for the recovery environment / command prompt), not even Safe Mode works.

* Chkdisk (still in progress) is not looking good for volume C.

The good news is:

* I have a second laptop to use in the meantime.

* Because this is not the first time, I've already made a bootable USB drive for recovery purposes.

* Because this is not the first time, I have already safely evacuated/backed up all userfiles I am aware of. I can afford resorting to extreme measures if necessary.

Anyway, here's the timeline I'm working with. (I know I'm omitting some details but):

* The first incident occurred back in November. After a particularly nasty bit of sluggish system responsiveness prompted me to cold-reboot the laptop, the file I was working on was lost (presumably due to a pending write-to-disk on that file; a hex editor verified it contained its stated filesize worth of null bytes). Over the next several reboot attempts (because I was booting from USB and unaware if I could use a second USB drive at the same time), I use the Command Prompt to xcopy my userfiles to safety. After that, I made it run chkdisk, which required approximately 72 hours to complete but marked the HDD as clean and allowed the system to boot as normal again. Crisis averted.

* The second incident occurred around the New Year: during startup, the system bluescreens with INTERNAL_POWER_ERROR. Quick research pointed to a corrupted "fast startup" as the culprit, but one chkdisk later (only requiring 6 hours this time; also reporting a small number of bad clusters, <100kb) and the system is back to normal. (Going forward, the "fast startup" option is disabled)

As an aside detail (neither necessarily related NOR unrelated), my system has experienced a few complete system hangs mostly in correlation with watching YouTube videos -- which are very rare incidents (<1 per month), but quite memorable for how the audio playback freezes.

And now for the current (ongoing) incident.

* Approximately last Thursday (3/14) I noticed my Internet browser (Mozilla Firefox) was not loading; attempts to do so instead triggered Mozilla Crash Reporter after about a 15-second wait.

* After several repetitions, I speculated that this is the type of problem that reinstalling the browser could legitimately fix, only to discover that Firefox Setup was ALSO crashing: it would attempt to load a UI window but hang for about 20 seconds then vanish.

* I tried to load Microsoft Edge, but IT TOO crashed: UI loads, hangs for 20 seconds, then it's gone again.

At this point I am suspecting a possibility of malware infection, albeit only because of actual prior experience -- about 10 years ago on an XP desktop, which actually was due to a rootkit (of the "ZeroAccess" family) but that got resolved by downloading a dedicated removal tool to run on boot. Either something is intentionally shutting down these processes (or perhaps some lower-level shared component between all three is crashing in an unexpected way).

Anyway.

* From my working laptop, I download Microsoft Safety Scanner (msert.exe), Bluetooth it over to the affected system, and let it run overnight. By morning, it's currently scanning through archives (.cab files, etc) and counts 19 infected files, but by the time it concludes, the Heartbeat and MAPS reports come back clean -- no confirmed infections. (I also downloaded Kaspersky's tool, kvert.exe, but have not run it)

* Regardless, I make a fresh backup of recent userfiles. There is no need to panic.

* Friday (3/15) the system runs normally, as if Thursday never even happened.

* Saturday (3/16) the system boots, but I cannot log in -- the lock screen responds to all the usual actions (mouse click, keystrokes, and Ctrl+Alt+Del) but no login prompt actually appears; then after 60 seconds it just reverts back to the lock screen again.

* Next, it won't start at all; I'm left at the boot logo and spinning wheel icon with no visible progress or meaningful information. I still have access to the Recovery Environment, but I cannot boot the OS normally. I cannot boot it with startup logging enabled. I cannot even boot it into Safe Mode. But at least I CAN access the Command Prompt.

* From the recovery menu, I attempted to "Reset this PC" (preserving userfiles), which ran for about an hour before it displayed a message saying it ran into "a problem" and thus reverted any actions.

Gotta love these "user friendly" error messages which provide zero elaboration? Anyway, I've done enough research to at least know about these next commands:

* I run SFC from the command line, but its log didn't seem to reveal anything unusual. (A few scattered messages about some files marked with duplicate ownership/security, but that was all.)

* I also run DISM on the offline image, but it aborts with an unexpected "I/O error" accessing various files.

* That leads me to CHKDISK ( run with /v /offlinescanandfix; the type of drive is NTFS).

* I have NOT observed any specific reason to use bootrec / bcdedit at this time (but I am aware they exist).

By now, CHKDSK has run for at least 100 hours but is "stuck" around 28% of Phase 1 (it counts 347K / 1.2M, but is in fact still counting!) and its estimate of remaining time (which currently reads as 795+ hours) cannot be trusted. It has also reported a very long list of "file record segment [address] is unreadable" (most of them forming contiguous ranges). It's been five days and basically the only reason I haven't interrupted it yet is because I've got a safe backup of my userfiles (including pretty much every installer for every application I've ever used) so I'm not really risking anything on that system.

But is there anything else I can do?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Igor Leyko 110.6K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-03-27T03:41:25+00:00

    Did you try to rewrite entire drive with MHDD tool? It may recover unstable sectors in many cases.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-03-27T02:01:21+00:00

    Chkdsk /r was a long run indeed: ~4.4 days to complete phase 1.

    I did periodically copy anything it displayed onscreen (/v) into Notepad while it ran, however that is all the information I was able to capture because upon checking back on the system a few hours later I find it at the initial "Select a language" prompt of the recovery environment. Did it somehow reboot? So is it running via the USB drive or the recovery partition on the HDD? No explanation, no answers. Chkdsk was probably unable to store its results into the Windows Event logs (because offline scan, etc.); is there an other way to query the same/similar information as would be shown in its final, summary report? (bad sector count, etc)

    Still, it'd be a waste not to analyze what I got...

    • Reported 858 unreadable sectors (estimated: ~6.7MB) forming 65 contiguous ranges, all but one of which occurred specifically in the range of (5388C - 572BB) (around the 28-29% progress mark). Roughly 5% of sectors in that range were reported unreadable.
    • Total scan time so far was: 106.3 hours. This averages about 8 bad sectors reported per hour.

    A quick check with CrystalDiskInfo did not display anything particularly unexpected, though the raw value for C5 (Pending Sector Count) is now 6E8, from 6E0 prior.

    Regardless, I attempted a DISM /cleanupimage /restorehealth (with SFC next on the docket): DISM complained about the scratch directory (again) then ran for a bit before aborting with error 1117 (I/O device error while servicing a component), also again.

    Replacing the HDD is viable if all else fails (1TB HDDs are not too expensive anymore) but I have not exhausted all the easier options yet...

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  3. Igor Leyko 110.6K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-03-21T22:14:46+00:00

    You have plenty of unstable sectors (C5 attribute), this cause hard drive's slowdowns including chkdsk operation and possibly program's faults.

    You may try to run

    chkdsk C: /r /scan

    command, thou it will be a very long run in your case.

    You may try to erase the drive using third-party MHDD tool, this should repair unstable sectors but require saving all your files and reinstalling Windows after erasing.

    If this is not expensive for you, you may consider replacing this drive with a new one. SSD will be preferrable.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-03-21T15:58:14+00:00

    Got the report. CDI flagged its overall status as "Caution" with just one yellow indicator (Current Pending Sector Count), the rest being blue:

    CrystalDiskInfo 9.2.3 (C) 2008-2024 hiyohiyo

                                 Crystal Dew World: [https://crystalmark.info/](https://crystalmark.info/ "crystalmark.info") ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  OS : Windows 10 Ultimate 2004 [10.0 Build 19041] (x64)

    Date : 2024/03/21 8:37:32 -- Controller Map ----------------------------------------------------------

    • AMD SATA Controller [ATA]
      • TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100
      • hp DVDRW GUD1N
    • Microsoft Storage Spaces Controller [SCSI]

    -- Disk List ---------------------------------------------------------------

    (01) TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 : 1000.2 GB [0/0/0, pd1]

    (01) TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Model : TOSHIBA MQ01ABD100

     Firmware : AX1R4C

Serial Number : Z65CWR1VT

    Disk Size : 1000.2 GB (8.4/137.4/1000.2/1000.2)

  Buffer Size : 8192 KB

  Queue Depth : 32

 # of Sectors : 1953525168

Rotation Rate : 5400 RPM

    Interface : Serial ATA

Major Version : ATA8-ACS

Minor Version : ----

Transfer Mode : SATA/600 | SATA/600

    Power On Hours : 17802 hours

    Power On Count : 11143 count

      Temperature : 24 C (75 F)

Health Status : Caution

     Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ, GPL

    APM Level : 0080h [ON]

    AAM Level : ----

 Drive Letter : C: D: F:

    -- S.M.A.R.T. --------------------------------------------------------------

    ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name

    01 _87 _80 _50 000000000000 Read Error Rate

    02 100 100 _50 000000000000 Throughput Performance

    03 100 100 __2 00000000056B Spin-Up Time

    04 100 100 __0 000000002BB5 Start/Stop Count

    05 100 100 _10 000000000000 Reallocated Sectors Count

    07 100 100 _50 000000000000 Seek Error Rate

    08 100 100 _50 000000000000 Seek Time Performance

    09 _56 _56 __0 00000000458A Power-On Hours

    0A 253 100 _30 000000000000 Spin Retry Count

    0C 100 100 __0 000000002B87 Power Cycle Count

    B7 100 100 __1 000000000000 Vendor Specific

    B8 100 100 _97 000000000000 End-to-End Error

    B9 100 100 __1 00000000FFFF Vendor Specific

    BB __1 __1 __0 00000000FFFF Reported Uncorrectable Errors

    BC 100 _98 __0 000000000006 Command Timeout

    BD 100 100 __1 000000000000 High Fly Writes

    BE _76 _56 _40 000029160018 Airflow Temperature

    BF 100 100 __0 00000004D4F1 G-Sense Error Rate

    C0 100 100 __0 000000440044 Power-off Retract Count

    C1 _94 _94 __0 0000000107BB Load/Unload Cycle Count

    C2 _76 _56 _40 000029160018 Temperature

    C4 100 100 __0 000000000000 Reallocation Event Count

    C5 100 100 __0 0000000006E0 Current Pending Sector Count (<-- yellow status icon)

    C7 200 200 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error Count

    -- IDENTIFY_DEVICE ---------------------------------------------------------

    0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

    000: 0040 3FFF C837 0010 0000 0000 003F 0000 0000 0000

    010: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 205A 3635 4357 5231 5654

    020: 0000 4000 0000 4158 3152 3443 2020 544F 5348 4942

    030: 4120 4D51 3031 4142 4431 3030 2020 2020 2020 2020

    040: 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 2020 8010 4000 2F00

    050: 4000 0200 0000 0007 3FFF 0010 003F FC10 00FB 0110

    060: FFFF 0FFF 0007 0007 0003 0078 0078 0078 0078 0000

    070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 001F 8D0E 0006 004C 0044

    080: 01F8 0000 706B 7C69 6123 7069 BC49 6123 203F 0062

    090: 0062 0080 FFFE 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    100: 6DB0 7470 0000 0000 0000 0000 6003 0000 5000 0397

    110: 74A0 17E6 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 401C

    120: 401C 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0029 0000

    130: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    140: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    150: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    160: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0003 0000

    170: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    180: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    190: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    200: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 003D 0000 0000 4000

    210: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 1518 0000 0000

    220: 0000 0000 103F 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    230: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0001 0080 0000 0000 0000 0000

    240: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

    250: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 19A5

    -- SMART_READ_DATA ---------------------------------------------------------

    +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F

    000: 10 00 01 2F 00 57 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 27

    010: 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 23 00 64 64 6B

    020: 05 00 00 00 00 00 04 32 00 64 64 B5 2B 00 00 00

    030: 00 00 05 33 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07 2F

    040: 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 25 00 64 64 00

    050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 32 00 38 38 8A 45 00 00 00

    060: 00 00 0A 33 00 FD 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C 32

    070: 00 64 64 87 2B 00 00 00 00 00 B7 32 00 64 64 00

    080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 B8 33 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00

    090: 00 00 B9 32 00 64 64 FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 BB 32

    0A0: 00 01 01 FF FF 00 00 00 00 00 BC 32 00 64 62 06

    0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 BD 3A 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00

    0C0: 00 00 BE 22 00 4C 38 18 00 16 29 00 00 00 BF 32

    0D0: 00 64 64 F1 D4 04 00 00 00 00 C0 22 00 64 64 44

    0E0: 00 44 00 00 00 00 C1 32 00 5E 5E BB 07 01 00 00

    0F0: 00 00 C2 22 00 4C 38 18 00 16 29 00 00 00 C4 32

    100: 00 64 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5 32 00 64 64 E0

    110: 06 00 00 00 00 00 C7 32 00 C8 C8 00 00 00 00 00

    120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 78 00 00 51

    170: 03 00 01 00 02 C9 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    180: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 8A

    -- SMART_READ_THRESHOLD ----------------------------------------------------

    +0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7 +8 +9 +A +B +C +D +E +F

    000: 10 00 01 32 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 32

    010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 02 00 00 00 00

    020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    030: 00 00 05 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07 32

    040: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 32 00 00 00 00

    050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    060: 00 00 0A 1E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C 00

    070: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 B7 01 00 00 00 00

    080: 00 00 00 00 00 00 B8 61 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    090: 00 00 B9 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BB 00

    0A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BC 00 00 00 00 00

    0B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 BD 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    0C0: 00 00 BE 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 BF 00

    0D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C0 00 00 00 00 00

    0E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C1 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    0F0: 00 00 C2 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C4 00

    100: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 C5 00 00 00 00 00

    110: 00 00 00 00 00 00 C7 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    120: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    130: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    140: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    150: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    160: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    170: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    180: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    190: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1A0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1B0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1C0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1D0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1E0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00

    1F0: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 A1

    As an aside, about an hour after last night's post chkdisk had FINALLY completed phase 1 (elapsed time: 3.94 days; 1.2M file records with 29k large records). Ctrl+C did not seem responsive but closing the window returned to the main recovery environment menu. I also found the log I copied down from the first incident, which reported 32kb in bad sectors (aka. 8 clusters at 4k per cluster) at the time, but is otherwise not particularly relevant now.

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  5. Igor Leyko 110.6K Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-03-21T01:47:28+00:00

    Hi,

    My name is Igor, it's a pleasure for me to help others and I'll try to help you.

    This may mean drive fault unfortunately. Please cancel chkdsk (Ctrl+C and wait for 5-10 minutes possible delay) or just turn PC off. Then turn it on and check drive's health with third-party CrystalDiskInfo tool and show the result.

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