HELP! Stuck at automatic repair loop... WONT BOOT.

[Edward168]

My 3 months old Acer laptop with Window 8 suddenly won't boot. I just see a blank screen with the mouse pointer still active. What can I do?

 

[XweAponX]

Sounds like an Activation Issue. Try CTRL-ALT-DEL and see if the Task Manager comes up, from there, run the SETUP on your Windows 8 Install disk.

Also, you should have just posted a new Thread- And referred to this one if you needed to. But your issue is not related to the one dealt with here.

 

[Edward168]

Thank you XweAponX, tried CTRL-ALT-DEL but no response.

 

[XweAponX]

Ok - So it is not an activation issue - It is stuck on some point of the Automatic Repair task. I'm gonna give you a list of things to do, try to do em the best you can.

First - Download "Hiren's Boot CD"

Download Hiren

There are a number of utrilities on there you can use to check your hardware. What I want yua to do, is check your Hard Drive for Read Element Failure.

If you boot to the disk, you will see "Dos Programs" - Open those and you will see "Hard Drive Tools" - Look for "ViVard" - this is the best program to scan a drive for Read Element Failure. When the program comes up, you will choose your Boot drive, and then you will select "Drive Scan with Remap" - SO that if you have read element failure on some sectors, the drive can be remapped to read properly. If it finds errors, it will fix them

Next, you exit out of ViVard to the main Hiren's Menu, and you will see "go back to the main menu" - Do that, and trhen choose "Mini XP"

And it will boot to a low-ram footprint of that OS. You may not need to hit "find all drivers" and "install network" - You can if you need to. These links are on the desktop

What we need to do, is run a short CHKDSK - There is a link in the Program Menu, "Scan Disks" - Click that, a dos window pops up, from there choose your main Boot drive, usually drive C, but sometimes this will be D, if you have a recover partition.

If this short Scandisk finds errors and fixes them, you may be good to go, but I always do a FULL CHKDSK after that, open a command windows or a Dos Box, and type "chkdsk c: /x /r"

And it will run a full scan. When this is done, restart and take the Boot Disk out, and let it try to boot regular, if you are asked, just choose "boot to Windows 8" and it will finish it's Auto Repair - DO NOT interrupt it, it will mess up your drive if you do.

The system should then finalize all repairs, and then finish booting. It will reboot several times, just let it finish, eventually tyou will see your Windows 8 User name and the circle.

If this does not fix it, we'll moce on from there.

 

[ByaTsuke]

My 3 months old Acer laptop with Window 8 suddenly won't boot. I just see a blank screen with the mouse pointer still active. What can I do?

I've fixed the issue a long time ago!
Very grateful for everyone here.

No matter how screwed your OS can be, even to the point it won't repair or reinstall itself, you can still repair it.
Get Linux OS into a CD, or a flash drive, boot it from there. You can start formatting your hard drive and get your files back then, which you will be able to install Windows 8 freshly.

As stated above however, you can probably find a way to fix it without any formatting.

 

[XweAponX]

Sorry, ByaTsuke, he posted on your thread with a new issue -

For fyoochjer reference, just make a new post for new Probs

 

[Dixon Butz]

One of my PC's had this stupid auto repiar loop.
It happend today when I was rebooting after installing some windows updtates.
Looks like it tried an auto repair then did the new win8 blue screen.
Easy to fix for me. Had a fresh image. Booted to win7. All my computers are multiboot.
Restored the image in 4min. Rebooted to win8. All fine.
Best advice:
LRN2IMG

 

[XweAponX]

Dixon - What did you use, Windows easy transfer, or you just backed up the IMG?

 

[Dixon Butz]

I use drive snapshot. Been using that for years. My fav. Drive Snapshot - Disk Image Backup for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/X64

 

[Dixon Butz]

I installed the same windows updates, rebooted, no problem this time. Time to make a new image. Don't know what happed the first time to cause that boot loop. It may have been from having world of warcraft open when I hit the reboot button.

 

[XweAponX]

Great! Thanx a lot - I'll get that... And I;ll use it once I free up space on my 2TB drive! heh.

 

[Dixon Butz]

I installed the same windows updates, rebooted, no problem this time. Time to make a new image. Don't know what happed the first time to cause that boot loop. It may have been from having world of warcraft open when I hit the reboot button.

Got the repair loop again today after rebooting from windows updates. There were 2 critical and about 6 optionals. I think some of the optionals were the same updates from the last time this rubbish happened.
Did an image just before the updates just in case....
Hate windows 8!

 

[XweAponX]

Damn! Try Scanning your drive from outside of Windows 8 using one of the tools mentioned earlier in this thread - Most of them are on Hiren's Boot CD - Link is in my Sig down below. Try "Vivard" - Use "Smart Remap" and if there are any bad spots on your drive, they will be safely locked off. Process takes a couple of hours, then do a CHKDSK from within Mini XP - Do a full CHKDSK c: /x /r then reboot and see if you are still in the loop.

 

[Dixon Butz]

I can restore a working image of win8 and reproduce it everytime by installing:Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 update rollup: May 2013 Done with 8