Windows 10 not booting

dielle85

Commendable
Jun 29, 2016
3
0
1,520
Hi,
Yesterday I woke up to find a blue screen on my Windows 10 computer that said Windows could not start. It suggested I try a system restore so I selected that option. The blue screen came back with a new message stating that Automatic Repair couldn't repair my PC. So then my husband selected advanced options and chose reset, which is supposed to keep all of your files but delete all your apps except for the ones that came installed on it, etc. After that it just got worse. Now after the boot screen and the windows screen it just turns black. We have another hard drive in the case that has an old copy of Windows 7 on it, that we've successfully booted before, but it won't boot that either, leading me to believe it's not the hard drive. I tried booting the UEFI and I get a screen that says EFI Shell version 2.31....Device mapping table....Press ESC in 1 seconds to skip startup.nsh, any other key to continue.
Shell> _
It just sits there and if I press Enter it just puts another Shell> _ under the last one.
All of the inner components are 2 1/2 years old. Is my motherboard failing?
Thanks for your time.
 
Solution
We figured it out. The 2 1/2 year old RAM was bad, and since the RAM was failing when he tried to do a Windows reset it just messed up Windows completely. So we replaced the RAM and reinstalled Win 7. Lesson learned: always make a recovery disk. Looks like now we'll have to pay for Win 10. Oh well.
It sounds like you're going to have to reinstall Windows unless you have a full system backup. You can likely retrieve any data you don't want to lose by booting something like a Linux disc. When you get ready to reinstall Windows, be sure you have all the drivers you'll need.

Good luck.
 

dielle85

Commendable
Jun 29, 2016
3
0
1,520
Thank you for responding!
Another question, if it was a software issue like a problem with Windows, shouldn't I still be able to boot up the copy of Windows 7 we have installed on the other hard drive?
Thanks again!
 

dielle85

Commendable
Jun 29, 2016
3
0
1,520
We figured it out. The 2 1/2 year old RAM was bad, and since the RAM was failing when he tried to do a Windows reset it just messed up Windows completely. So we replaced the RAM and reinstalled Win 7. Lesson learned: always make a recovery disk. Looks like now we'll have to pay for Win 10. Oh well.
 
Solution
I'm glad you got it fixed. Better than a recovery disc is a full system backup. I wouldn't be without them. There are excellent free backup/restore programs available, and you can buy a 1 TB external hard drive for around $55. They've saved me from problems more times than I could count.

Good luck.