SOLVED Bsod twice, then menu with options but nothing works

[Destiny323]

Here's a breakdown of the issue

1 Bsod twice - just the cursor moved with nothing to click

2 Third boot it moved to "diagnosing problems" beneath acer logo and a menu showed up (yay!)

3 Selected a date for system restore from a few days prior (most recent of 3 available dates)

4 same story on reboot, so I went in to select an earlier date, but now that option was no longer working - "no restore points have been created on your computer system" ok....

5 I moved to a reset that keeps all personal files... it goes to 1% for a minute or two and then error "there was a problem resetting your pc. No changes were made" (cancel) - back at square one

6 I'm beginning to panic at this point and open the cmd menu to see if I can do some advanced troubleshooting that might have worked for others

7 prompt sfc /scannow - starts then stops and gives me message "there is a system repair pending which requires reboot to complete. Restart Windows and run again." (If only it were really that easy)

8 Naively I restart and try again, same outcome

9 new prompt dism.exe /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth - it says error 50 dism does not support servicing Windows PE with /online option (what is windows pe?)

10 new prompt
dism.exe /image:C:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions
- tells me it can't access a certain temporary file and to make sure the directory has read/write permission (I'm using cmd as administrator)

11 I think maybe the pending restore is tying up files in temp that the prompt can't bypass, so I use a wildcard prompt to delete all files in temp

12 I retry
dism.exe /image:C:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions a few times, each time noticing it references a different temp filename as the problem

13 I search through forums here and find nothing that can help me.

14 I notice my drive in cmd is x not c so I use prompt
dism.exe /image:x:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions but it tells me the /image option that is specified points to a running Windows installation. To service the running operating system use the /online option

15 I try a few variations of above prompt and cannot get anything to work

16 I use prompt del c:\windows\winsxs\pending.xml file cannot be found

17 I use prompt del x:\windows\winsxs\pending.xml seems to work - no error

18 I retry sfc /scannow - it's running! Verification phase 100% complete. Then, message: Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.

19 I close and try to start Windows, but no cigar.

20 I try another reset - it fails again, same message as before "there was a problem"

21 So here I stand asking for help. What else can I do?

Some other notes, on start-up every time, a window flashes up and quickly disappears too fast to see what it says. I took a video with my phone in order to pause and read it: winpeshl.exe

Also rstrui.exe application error showed up at some point along the way (possibly after first system restore attempt) - attaching image


I am trying to be as detailed as possible in case others are having some of the same issues and searching. I wish I could revert back to Windows 8. It has been a month or more since I did the free upgrade, and it was a little glitchy but tolerable, and now this.... I feel so robbed.

 

[Trouble]

X:\ is generally going to be your boot device (DVD or ThumbDrive) in Windows PE (Pre-Installation Environment)
Your best bet in the command prompt to find your Widows installation is to navigate the various drives
C:\ (likely your system reserved partition)
hit enter
dir
hit enter
look for Windows, Program Files, etc. the normal directories that would appear in a drive / partition with Windows installed.
D:\
hit enter
dir
hit enter
same deal look for the Windows directory, etc.
IN the PE the drives and partitions are not generally enumerated as you would expect.
Other than that it sounds like you are doing everything you possibly can.

 

[Destiny323]

X:\ is generally going to be your boot device (DVD or ThumbDrive) in Windows PE (Pre-Installation Environment)
Your best bet in the command prompt to find your Widows installation is to navigate the various drives
C:\ (likely your system reserved partition)
hit enter
dir
hit enter
look for Windows, Program Files, etc. the normal directories that would appear in a drive / partition with Windows installed.
D:\
hit enter
dir
hit enter
same deal look for the Windows directory, etc.
IN the PE the drives and partitions are not generally enumerated as you would expect.
Other than that it sounds like you are doing everything you possibly can.

Thank you, yes that was why the sfc /scannow prompt was failing bc I wasn't specifying the directories. I am right now running "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=x:\ /offwindir=c:\windows" (note to others, your dir letters might be different from mine - x and c might be c and d or something), but the cursor is blinking, which I've read means it's running and could take awhile. It has been quite a long time, so I'll probably plug in my laptop and rest for the night, maybe check on it in the morning and see if the integrity issues found by the /verifyonly command could be resolved. Fingers crossed and praying to a God who I know loves me that this works. If not complete success and Windows still won't start after the first run through, then I'm hoping it will on the 2nd or 3rd attempt after restarting. I'll update in the morning. Thanks again!

 

[Destiny323]

Nope. Didn't work. It was still same screen at 4 am so I restarted and tried a /verifyonly - still found issues. I deleted the pending.xml again and ran the offline scannow set again.... it's now 10:30 and still running. I'm not sure if this is normal for it to take several hours so I'm just letting it be to see what happens.

If it can't repair windows 10, is there any way to uninstall through cmd commands and revert back to Windows 8 that came on the laptop?

 

[Trouble]

revert back to Windows 8 that came on the laptop?

I would assume that provided there is nothing physically wrong with your hard disk drive, then you could use the factory partition and the Acer E Recovery Utility to perform a factory reset
Usually holding Alt and tapping F10 when you power on the system of holding Alt + Ctrl and tapping F10 will evoke the E Recovery Utility. This will of course result in all data and programs that are not part of the Factory Image being lost.
Do you have a recent backup of all your critical data?
Have you ever created a System Image or even better a full Disk Image?

 

[Destiny323]

I would assume that provided there is nothing physically wrong with your hard disk drive, then you could use the factory partition and the Acer E Recovery Utility to perform a factory reset
Usually holding Alt and tapping F10 when you power on the system of holding Alt + Ctrl and tapping F10 will evoke the E Recovery Utility. This will of course result in all data and programs that are not part of the Factory Image being lost.
Do you have a recent backup of all your critical data?
Have you ever created a System Image or even better a full Disk Image?

I don't have any critical files on there that I don't also have backed up elsewhere. The only thing would be some photos that will be sad to lose, but the very special ones are on Flickr or at least Facebook where I can at least still view them. If I hook up an external hard drive to the laptop, is there any command that can send files from my c: to that drive?

 

[Trouble]

Sure.... once you have positively identified your Windows Drive as drive letter Q:\ and your external drive as drive letter W:\
Then you can simply type
XCOPY Q:\Users\YourUserName\* W:\ /S /I
Assuming Q:\ is source containing your user folder (profile) and W:\ is destination
That should copy your entire user profile folder including any images, music, documents, etc.,
/S = Copy folders and subfolders
/I = If in doubt always assume the destination is a folder
e.g. when the destination does not exist.

 

[Destiny323]

OK so trial and error messages and now I am successfully using the following command to copy my photos over to my external hard drive d.

Xcopy c:\users\destiny\pictures d:\acer /c /s

First I had to make directory for destination using command md d:\acer because it told me it didn't exist

I was able to find exact path using dir command

Also I just realized I have adobe creative suite installed on the Acer currently so I'm not sure if there is a way to deactivate those from cmd so I can reinstall on factory reset without running into issues...?

 

[Destiny323]

Maybe I'll be fine with Adobe actually bc it's being reinstalled on the same device so never-ending on that. I am just waiting for these files to finish so I can do a factory reset here

 

[Trouble]

Just make sure you check the files and confirm that they are where you expect them to be and that you have everything you want before going forward.

 

[Destiny323]

Success! Total success. Files copied beautifully, factory reset went off without a hitch, and I'm just sticking with Windows 8 and refusing the upgrade to 10. Thanks for your help. It will feel good to mark this resolved!

 

[Trouble]

Nice work..... glad to hear you managed to get up and running again.
Thanks for the update.
Much appreciated.