Hey everyone,

I wondered if any of the local techies could help, because my laptop died this morning. We had an electrician round and he had to turn off the power, so whilst he did I was using the battery, but still plugged in, and as soon as he turned the power back on my laptop screen went black and can no longer boot, so my theory is that it was some sort of power surge that fried it or at least corrupted some files.

The worst thing is we can't do any of the recovery options (for Windows 10) because it won't accept my password, and I'm not entirely sure which password it is asking for ie my laptop was never set up with a local password but instead a number code (ie a 'PIN'), that PIN doesn't work, nor does my Microsoft Account password (ie tied to my Microsoft email account), and like I said, I've never set up any local password beyond that PIN, but typing nothing didn't work either. So if anyone knows exactly what password is required there, that would be very helpful.

We managed to boot using a Linux USB boot disk, just to at least see that the SSD seems to be okay, and backup some files, and to get into safe mode to try chkdsk and which reported lots of 'orphaned files'. I then tried System Restore, restoring to restore point three days ago, and that seems to have made things a hundred times worse; now it's just caught in a loop "attempting auto repair" and failing with stopcode c000021a, fatal system error, and now won't let anything boot from USB or let me into safe mode, or basically do anything else.

So any suggestions here would be awesome, and much appreciated, because I'm at my wit's end

(February 21, 2023 at 3:35 pm)emjay Wrote: Hey everyone,

I wondered if any of the local techies could help, because my laptop died this morning. We had an electrician round and he had to turn off the power, so whilst he did I was using the battery, but still plugged in, and as soon as he turned the power back on my laptop screen went black and can no longer boot, so my theory is that it was some sort of power surge that fried it or at least corrupted some files.

The worst thing is we can't do any of the recovery options (for Windows 10) because it won't accept my password, and I'm not entirely sure which password it is asking for ie my laptop was never set up with a local password but instead a number code (ie a 'PIN'), that PIN doesn't work, nor does my Microsoft Account password (ie tied to my Microsoft email account), and like I said, I've never set up any local password beyond that PIN, but typing nothing didn't work either. So if anyone knows exactly what password is required there, that would be very helpful.

We managed to boot using a Linux USB boot disk, just to at least see that the SSD seems to be okay, and backup some files, and to get into safe mode to try chkdsk and which reported lots of 'orphaned files'. I then tried System Restore, restoring to restore point three days ago, and that seems to have made things a hundred times worse; now it's just caught in a loop "attempting auto repair" and failing with stopcode c000021a, fatal system error, and now won't let anything boot from USB or let me into safe mode, or basically do anything else.

So any suggestions here would be awesome, and much appreciated, because I'm at my wit's end

First, before doing anything else, I would backup the SSD so that if things get worse, you can restore to where things are now. If you have an external hard disk, clone the main drive using disk cloning software. Then, if you have installation disks for your operating system, you can try performing what is known as an upgrade in place wherein you instruct it to install to the current Windows install. Though given how goofed up things sound, that might make matters worse (thus the advice to back up the SSD first). There are some free options available, but I haven't looked recently to see what is recommended. I think Acronis has a trial period, but you'd need to install that to another computer in order to make a rescue USB drive.

^That’s exactly what I was going to say!!

Boru

If that doesn't work you can sacrifice Trump to the computer gods.

Won't help but it will be fun.

I usually hit mine with a stick,........... then buy a new one.

Did you try to google the error code?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...8de31d6c92

You say it's a laptop, so I'm not expecting you to have a DVD drive to do what they suggest there.
It is strange that your system is refusing to boot from the USB stick. Have you tried to go in the BIOS to see if Windows messed something up in there? Activate all the defaults and then check the boot order to have the USB prior to the disk.

It is possible to create a windows 10 boot usb stick: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...c3b507420d
If you can boot from this USB stick, then you should be able to follow the steps in the first link I put here to repair the BCD.


There seem to be ways to repair the BCD from linux too: https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-bootloader-linux/

(February 21, 2023 at 5:12 pm)Angrboda Wrote:

(February 21, 2023 at 3:35 pm)emjay Wrote: Hey everyone,

I wondered if any of the local techies could help, because my laptop died this morning. We had an electrician round and he had to turn off the power, so whilst he did I was using the battery, but still plugged in, and as soon as he turned the power back on my laptop screen went black and can no longer boot, so my theory is that it was some sort of power surge that fried it or at least corrupted some files.

The worst thing is we can't do any of the recovery options (for Windows 10) because it won't accept my password, and I'm not entirely sure which password it is asking for ie my laptop was never set up with a local password but instead a number code (ie a 'PIN'), that PIN doesn't work, nor does my Microsoft Account password (ie tied to my Microsoft email account), and like I said, I've never set up any local password beyond that PIN, but typing nothing didn't work either. So if anyone knows exactly what password is required there, that would be very helpful.

We managed to boot using a Linux USB boot disk, just to at least see that the SSD seems to be okay, and backup some files, and to get into safe mode to try chkdsk and which reported lots of 'orphaned files'. I then tried System Restore, restoring to restore point three days ago, and that seems to have made things a hundred times worse; now it's just caught in a loop "attempting auto repair" and failing with stopcode c000021a, fatal system error, and now won't let anything boot from USB or let me into safe mode, or basically do anything else.

So any suggestions here would be awesome, and much appreciated, because I'm at my wit's end

First, before doing anything else, I would backup the SSD so that if things get worse, you can restore to where things are now.  If you have an external hard disk, clone the main drive using disk cloning software.  Then, if you have installation disks for your operating system, you can try performing what is known as an upgrade in place wherein you instruct it to install to the current Windows install.  Though given how goofed up things sound, that might make matters worse (thus the advice to back up the SSD first).  There are some free options available, but I haven't looked recently to see what is recommended.  I think Acronis has a trial period, but you'd need to install that to another computer in order to make a rescue USB drive.

Thanks Angrboda, I really appreciate your thoughts. It's kind of moot now though as we decided to reinstall windows from scratch... at this point that was literally the only option we had left that was working, and during the setup I confirmed to myself there was indeed no place to set up a local password as opposed to a PIN, and it had no problem signing into my Microsoft account here, so no idea what was going on back there. But it does make me think I'm going to have to set up such a local password to prevent this happening again in the future. As for the backups, I was trying to do a larger scale backup but the drive I did it onto failed halfway through, frustrating me even more, if such a thing was possible at this point, so just resorted using a pen drive and saving some select files; I'm happy enough I got my my documents, downloads, desktop, save game files, and some programming projects... the rest I'm just going to have to reinstall. My dad did suggest we wait and buy a new large drive for a full backup but I was just so frustrated and everything that I just wanted to get on with it. It does seem to have lost all the customisation that this (gaming) laptop had, and all the associated bloatware, but in theory it saved a 'Windows.old' folder somewhere so might be able to get some of it back from there. There is one little silver lining though; it is the latest version of Windows 10...22H2...and the one I wanted to fix it on with that registry hack we talked about before, so at least I didn't have to update a million times to get there. Anyway, thanks again for your advice.

(February 21, 2023 at 6:01 pm)brewer Wrote: I usually hit mine with a stick,........... then buy a new one.

That was my initial thought yeah... because a few hours ago this was nothing but a very high tech paperweight so I'm glad I at least got something working on it again.

Reminds me I need to back up my laptop. It's been a while.

(February 21, 2023 at 6:17 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Did you try to google the error code?

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...8de31d6c92

You say it's a laptop, so I'm not expecting you to have a DVD drive to do what they suggest there.
It is strange that your system is refusing to boot from the USB stick. Have you tried to go in the BIOS to see if Windows messed something up in there? Activate all the defaults and then check the boot order to have the USB prior to the disk.

It is possible to create a windows 10 boot usb stick: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/wind...c3b507420d
If you can boot from this USB stick, then you should be able to follow the steps in the first link I put here to repair the BCD.


There seem to be ways to repair the BCD from linux too: https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-bootloader-linux/

Heya poca, nice to see you

The error code was just 'fatal system error', and it just kept going round and round in circles. I thought it had messed up the USB as well, but was wrong about that, it just seemed to reset the boot order each time (unless it just doesn't save it long term in the first place) so we managed to get it booting from USB again, but everything else wasn't working any more, like getting into safe mode.

Yeah no dvd drive and yeah what we did was just create a USB boot disk for Windows 10, but it wouldn't let us do anything with it other than a full reinstall; ie not even upgrade while keeping the existing files etc.