Windows 10 gets stuck at boot up

[Karlos]

Acer Aspire 5943G upgraded from Win 7 to 10, Kaspersky 2015.
After tolerating a couple of glitches (track pad not scrolling, right speaker down, tiles at start menu not displayed, some icons not visable on task bar) I can now not boot up. The windows 10 logo appears with a rotating 'we'll get there sometime' device for a short while, after which the screen flickers black then grey/blue. It does not reach sign in, there is no cursor and it stays this way, although it will shut down ready for me to try again. I have tried hitting F8 during this but with no effect. F2 brings up set up, but I am not happy playing there without advice ~ any ideas how I can get back in to it?

 

[Trouble]

Hello Karlos and welcome to the forum.
When you are stuck at the final screen where it appears to be "stuck", can you.....
Hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete keys simultaneously on your keyboard, does that produce anything at all?
Like an option to launch Task Manager?

 

[Karlos]

Hi trouble.
Thank you for answering my first thread of any kind, and for the welcome.
I had tried ctrl+alt+del during the blank screen, but gave it a go earlier this time. Windows then went in to self diagnose, followed by an option for a restart or advanced options. Restart took me back to square one, so went to advanced options and reset windows, opting to save my files. Once it had re-installed windows I got another blank screen, but now with a cursor. I still cannot log on or boot up?

 

[Trouble]

OK.....
Not sure if that could actually be called progress or not.
How about now...... at the blank screen with a cursor, can you use Ctrl + Alt + Delete to produce anything?
Do you hear or see any disk activity, like a light or some noise..... anything?

 

[Karlos]

Hello again. Have tried that but this time there is no response, although it is trying to do something as there is plenty of activity and the fan comes on. I left it trying while I went out, and it had gone to sleep on my return but no change when I woke it ~ any ideas (I appreciate your time and thoughts). Karlos.

 

[Trouble]

You're probably going to need to boot from the Installation Media and afterwards on the second page after the initial choose a language and keyboard layout page you should see a link that says "Repair Your PC".
Use that to navigate to the Advanced, Troubleshooting, Option page and see if any of those options might help with your problem.

Maybe first try "Startup Settings" and see if you can boot to Safe Mode.
If not maybe try a "System Restore" to a previous point in time, use the Check Box to "Show more restore points" if necessary.
System Image Recovery is a good one, if you've made a System Image
And so on.... Startup Repair will help sometimes"
Your "Go back to" option may be available depending on how long you have had 10 installed and the availability of your Windows.OLD folder.

 

[Karlos]

Hello again and sorry for the time warp, a hectic life meant the Acer had been put to one side.
Since I took up the free upgrade from Win 7 to 10 I do not have a backup copy of Win10, but I do have another device running on this ~ so is it possible to copy this to a memory stick/flash drive and boot from that?
Regards from England.

 

[Trouble]

but I do have another device running on this

Not exactly sure what you mean by the above, but.....
Typically you can acquire the installation media from Microsoft ...
The installation media can be obtained through either of these two resources.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/techbench
OR
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

Once you have the ISO, you can use ImgBurn to burn it to a DVD or Rufus to burn it to a USB ThumbDrive, either of which you can use to boot your computer.

 

[Karlos]

Hi, thank you for the links and giving me some hope (would like to save my daughters pictures).
I was asking if I could use a copy of the operating system from another device and reinstall it on the Acer, but as you can tell this is all new to me.
Will let you know how I get on ~ thank you.

 

[Trouble]

I was asking if I could use a copy of the operating system from another device and reinstall it on the Acer

No. that wouldn't be possible.

would like to save my daughters pictures

There are a couple methods to accomplish that.
You can physically remove the hard drive from the existing system and attach it to a second running system by using a USB Hard Drive Dock or USB cables specifically designed for such purposes, or....
You could boot the system from a Linux Live Distro and copy off the files that way.
Personally I'd try exhausting the build in advanced troubleshooting option, like system restore before anything else. There is even a Reset option that will allow you to keep your personal data, but will require that you reinstall any programs that were installed.

 

[Karlos]

Hi
Have managed to get to the above menu and was able to try a reset but a problem was found and could not complete, and start up repair could not repair.
System restore found only four points, all of which were after the original failure. I tried the earliest two, but ran into an unspecified error (0x80070005), and was told a file could not be accessed 'probably due to antivirus', but am unable to disarm as requested.
There is no system image to restore to, no start up option tile, and no earlier build.
I seem to be left with Command prompts or 'Install Windows' ~ will this delete my files?

 

[Trouble]

As I mentioned above.....
To attempt to save any critical data on the computer you will likely have to either remove the hard drive from the existing system and attach it to a second running system by using a USB Hard Drive Dock or USB cables specifically designed for such purposes, or....
You could boot the system from a Linux Live Distro and copy off the files that way.
A possible third option would involve a second Windows Computer and installing one of several third party products that I mention in another post on this forum.
I strongly recommend using Acronis ( I think they have a time limited free trial that you could possibly use) install it on the second machine use it to create bootable rescue media to boot the problem machine and create a disk image of the hard drive in the problem machine from which you should be able to (mount and) copy off the user profile containing all critical data.
https://www.windows10forums.com/threads/please-for-your-own-peace-of-mind.794/