Seeking help with a Windows issue where it won’t boot. Need guidance on troubleshooting steps.
Seeking help with a Windows issue where it won’t boot. Need guidance on troubleshooting steps.
Today I powered on my PC and it kept loading in a strange place—not the Windows logo, but between the windows icon and the login screen. The mouse shows a loading symbol. I initially thought explorer.exe was damaged because I use a program that lets multiple computers share a mouse, and it seemed to be stuck in that odd state. I tried several fixes: 1) Disconnected all other drives, kept SSD on, nothing worked. 2) Had problems yesterday with large WAV files; used a Linux Live USB to delete them, but it didn’t help. 3) Tried recovery options, none succeeded. 4) After many troubleshooting steps, I managed to restore using DISM and ran SFC/CHKDSK, everything appeared fine. 5) Switched to another graphics card just in case, but it failed too. All components seem fine, especially since I worked with a Linux Live USB. My specs are FX-4350 and GTX 1050, 8GB RAM, 750W quiet PSU, Windows 10 fully updated. Do I really need to reinstall Windows? It would take days to get everything running again. Any missed steps? Thanks for your help, and sorry for the poor English.
I also have a backup from a week ago, but 10 years ago I lost a lot of files when I tried that option. I'm really worried about that happening again. All my important work is there, and the thought of losing it is scary. If I can just reinstall the OS, it would be much easier.
Using a restore point often results in losing files because you might have changed them during that time. When you try to restore your PC, any changes made afterward could be overwritten. If the restore point fails, the only options are to reset your drives and reinstall Windows. Let me know if you need more details.
Hello. Have you attempted to remove the latest Windows update before? I've experienced similar problems, and often resolving them can get your system running again if it fails to boot after an update. And yes, I managed to install a version yesterday on Windows 11.
Consider checking for corrupted Windows files or a failing boot drive. Start by creating a backup using your Linux USB drive, then attempt to reinstall Windows. If issues continue, switch to a different SSD as the boot device.