SOLVED Computer won't boot, need help.

[Mike Kingsbury]

Hi

We had several power outages over night, my computer was turned off, but was plugged in.
When I tried to boot it this morning, it froze a few seconds after the rotating dots appeared on the screen.

I tried several times, but same thing everytime. So I put in my Ubuntu boot disk and when that opened if was just a list of messages that said problem reading sector and a bunch of numbers.

Next I put in my EaseUS Todo recovery disk, with the intent of restoring my backup.
That started up but just sat at the loading screen forever. I finally closed that and tried booting from the boot menu, this brought up message saying to put in the Windows disk and repair your computer.

So I booted to the Windows 10 disk.
The problem is that it doesn't offer the Repair option. Only Upgrade and keep your files, or Fresh Install.

By this point I'm ready to do that, I have nothing but Windows and a few small programs on my C:\ Drive
All my data and software is on other drives.

So I select that, and it says it can't do that, because the partition is formatted GPT.

Ok I do have the option to format the partition, will that give me to option to change the format and what format should I format it too, NTFS?

I would really like to get the Repair option but I tried multiple times and all I get is the install options.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd like to to hear them.
It may be that the drive format is why my Ubuntu and Restore disk won't boot, I've never used either of them on my new computer before. And they were created on my old computer.

I could create new ones on my wife's brand new laptop if that might help, simply restoring my backup would be the easiest solution.

 

[Trouble]

So I select that, and it says it can't do that, because the partition is formatted GPT.

Sounds a bit like your boot menu has been altered.
Check you BIOS under "Boot" and confirm that "Windows Boot Manager" is select as your first boot device and that you still have Safe Boot enabled.

It sounds a bit like the computer is expecting a MBR partition with legacy BIOS and you have a GPT partition with UEFI firmware.

 

[Mike Kingsbury]

Hi

The internet has just come back online after being down for several days, our electricity is still down and we are running off our generator.

But before that happened I contacted Falcon Northwest and explained what happened.

They told me to unplug the power cord and unplug everything from the computer, push the power button on the computer and let it sit for a while. Since our power was down by then I did that and later in the day, still running off of our generator I plugged it back in and it booted up normally.

So the problem is solved, our power still off, but the internet just came back up after being down for several days.

What Falcon said was that the power outages during the night corrupted the boot information stored when the computer is turned off.

And that removing all the power and pushing the power button drains the capacitors and let's the information go to the default settings.

Anyway it worked, maybe this info will be helpful to someone else, I certainly didn't know this.

Mike

 

[davehc]

Very interesting, and useful, feedback —tks