The computer is locked or disabled.
The computer is locked or disabled.
I began an offline Windows Defender scan 36 hours ago. The machine has been idle, flashing the HDD LED every eight seconds and showing only the Windows logo. After a hard reboot it restarts with the same result—Windows logo without any text or loading wheel. All my terabytes of storage on PCIe and SAS drives remain unaffected. I’ve removed them all and still faced the same problem. Four more hours passed without improvement. Even more unusual, the Windows installer USB freezes and doesn’t load. I can’t boot from recovery media to fix the installation or anything else. As a last option, I considered transferring the system drive to another computer and wiping it clean, though I’d rather avoid that. Reinstalling all the software and strange drivers would be extremely frustrating. I’m not sure what else I could try. It seems there’s some pending scan file still loading, prompting Windows to restart the defender each time it boots, which isn’t working. The advice I found online only makes sense if the computer actually starts up normally—something that hasn’t happened here. I’d appreciate any suggestions you might have. This workstation seems notoriously unreliable. To be honest, it’s unlikely the issue stems from a crypto miner virus, since the malware would need the system running to benefit. My machine is a 2010 Win 10 Pro x64 with HP Z840, latest BIOS, and dual Pro boot drive.
Perform a memtest86 USB boot and examine the results. The second mode might indicate the SSD is failing or dead.
BIOS memory check showed no problems, and there were none before this situation. The SSD is in good shape with 86% health and all BIOS tests passed. Previously, the workstation struggled to boot from Windows USB drives and similar media, but that’s no longer a concern for me now.
Indicates the BCD file is damaged. If you can't access a USB installer for Windows to execute bootrec, consider using bootsect instead. It's wise to back up the drive before proceeding, so you have a backup to work from later. Then, connect the faulty boot drive to another machine, boot from that host's boot sector, and run bootsect from Windows to repair the MBR on the non-functional drive: bootsect /nt60 <drive_letter>: /mbr