How can we repair an operating system that is corrupted and not booting up?
|
It's really dreadful to start a day like this: You arrive at your office early in the morning, sit down and get down to the urgent work. Crap! The computer won't boot up at all. Reboot it, and still a failure. Most of computer users might have experienced this. Stay calm! Show
For Computer Won't Boot up with Hardware Issue:If there's no signal light on your computer when you try to boot it, it might be a PC power problem or hardware problems, you need to check it yourself or find some professionals to fix it. Note: There is another reason for this issue: Graphics card failure. When Graphic card is failed, your computer can be running but it won't boot at all. Fix the Computer Won't Boot Issue with 5 MethodsNo matter why your computer won't boot up, the first thing you should do is to get a Windows bootable disk or CD to get your computer starting. Only the computer is started, you can troubleshoot other errors or problems on the system. To solve this problem is quite easy. There are 5 things you can do to save your Windows back. First of all, you need to create a bootable disk, check out this page to do that. #1. Do a boot file recoveryWhen you start the computer, it always crashes with a black screen. There may be one of the following boot files lost. You can do a boot file recovery to get them back to normal. For detailed steps, check How to Repair a BOOTMGR Missing Error #2. Do an MBR recoveryMBR, the short name of Master Boot Recorder, locates the first sector of the hard disk. The MBR is not placed in a partition but located at a main boot record area in front of (with a lower LBA sector number than) the first partition. MBR issues can bring you the hard disk boot failure. When it happens, you will see "invalid partition table", "hard disk boot failure", etc. on your computer. For the detailed solutions, check out this post. #3. Do a boot sector recoveryThe partition boot sector is a small section of the hard disk partition that contains information about the operating system's file system (NTFS or FAT32), as well as a very small machine language program that is crucial in assisting the operating system as it loads. If you suspect that Windows XP won't boot because the partition boot sector has been corrupted, you can try to fix it. You can use this command chkdsk C: /f (you can replace C: to any drive, you'd like to run a scan for, e.g. D:) to check and fix a corrupt file system. #4. Do a registry recoveryThe registry is a small database that stores configuration settings and options in Windows. It contains settings for low-level operating system components as well as the applications running on the platform: device drivers, kernel, services, user interface, SAM, and third-party application all make use of the registry. If the Registry is corrupted, it may cause the computer won't boot up. You may encounter a blue screen, blank screen, application booting error, registry configure error, etc. All these problems may be caused by the Registry abnormity. #5. Do a Windows restoreThe problem of Windows booting failure can be caused by different reasons, like corrupted or missing Windows system files; corrupted DPT (Disk Partition Table); damaged MBR, and corrupted registry. If you backed up your Windows/MBR/DPT/Registry before, you can restore it easily by clicking the button below when they crashed. Recover Lost Data When You Failed to Boot the Computer with the Above MethodsIf the computer is running and you just can't boot it, you can fix this computer won't boot issue easily with a Windows bootable disk/cd. But if you have tried all the above methods and failed to boot the computer, the best choice to recover lost data on the computer and reinstall Windows 10. Under these circumstances, Recoverit can help you to create a bootable media and recover all data from the unbootable computer. When Windows 10 gets wonky, try this series of repair techniques — in this order — to attempt to set things right.Computerworld|
Table of Contents Show More Sometimes a Windows 10 system starts misbehaving to the point where repair is needed. This often takes the form of worsening performance or stability, and can originate from damage to, loss of, or corruption of Windows system files typically found in the I initially wrote this story in 2016, but as Windows 10 has evolved over time, some of the steps have changed a bit. I’ve now updated it for the latest versions of Windows 10. That said, most of these approaches also work with Windows 7 and 8 (with slight variations), and the advice here applies almost identically to Windows 11, which Microsoft is gradually rolling out to Windows 10 users whose hardware can support the new OS via Windows Update from October 2021 into early 2022. The Windows 10 (or 11) repair drillThe idea is to first try the initial step in the sequence. If that doesn’t fix what’s broken, advance to the next step. Keep working through the steps in order until you reach the end, and you are bound to fix the vast majority of problems. (The only remaining step at that point would be to replace the system on which the software is running, and that’s outside the scope of this story.) The amount of time and effort required for each step goes up incrementally. Some steps involve additional work to restore the prior state of your PC more or less back to where it was prior to taking that step. Thus, the most important bit of advice I can dispense for those who must venture beyond Step 1 is this: make a complete backup of your system to provide a source for files and information that might otherwise go missing. Ignore this advice at your own risk. Back it up before you lose it!Any time you make major changes to a Windows system, such as installing a major application suite like Microsoft Office or performing an OS upgrade or repair, it’s a good idea to begin that process with a complete backup. The important thing is to use a backup tool that creates an image backup of your boot/system drive. That will allow you to rewrite that drive and restore your system to normal operation should anything go wrong with your changes or repairs. See my article “How to make a Windows 10 or 11 image backup” for instructions. Step 1: Using DISM and SFC for system repairSince I wrote the original version of this story, I’ve obtained direct advice from Microsoft that it’s best to run DISM before running the System File Checker, a.k.a. SFC. Hence, I am reversing the order of events for this step. I’ll echo Microsoft and say “Always run DISM first, then SFC second, not vice versa.” DISM is the Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool. It’s a kind of Swiss Army knife for working with Windows operating system images, both offline and online. DISM can often fix things that SFC can detect but that it cannot itself fix. DISM supports a raft of capabilities with switches and parameters to match, but basic system file repair syntax is reasonably easy (though it often requires multiple passes before it can set things straight). You must run DISM in an Administrator: Command Prompt window (press the Windows key + X combination and select Command Prompt (Admin) from the resulting pop-up menu) or in an Administrative PowerShell or Windows Terminal session. Here’s some sample syntax (consult the TechNet DISM Technical Reference for all the gory details):
Most of the time when you run this command, the output will find nothing amiss, as shown in Figure 1: Figure 1: DISM can check the health of any Windows image. Here, it reports all is well on a production PC. The If DISM reports that component store corruption is found and is repairable, you should attempt repairs. That syntax reads:
Even if errors were detected in the preceding step, this command should complete successfully. It replaces corrupt or questionable elements in the Windows Side-by-Side (WinSxS) store, reading from a local copy of your Windows image files. The A safer bet is to point DISM at a known good source for Windows image components on the local machine (or on your local network). This can be a Windows image ( The syntax for image files is where things can get interesting. To point to the
To use an ESD file, change the wim items to esd, as shown here:
If you run into difficulties getting this to work, try adding the Note: the version and language for the Figure 2 shows typical DISM output using Figure 2: Even when DISM Next, it’s time to run SFC, Microsoft’s System File Checker. To quote TechNet, the system file checker “scans and verifies versions of all protected system files.” It can tell you if it finds anything amiss if you enter SFC As with DISM, you must run SFC from an Administrator: Command Prompt or an Administrative PowerShell or Windows Terminal session. This command takes 5 to 10 minutes to complete, depending on your PC hardware. Unlike DISM, SFC scans and initiates repairs within a single command. Figure 3 shows sample output when SFC finds files in need of repair. If this occurs on your PC, repeat the Figure 3: If SFC finds questionable files, it will repair them if it can. Here, it succeeds. (Click image to enlarge it.) Figure 4: Eventually, SFC will report finding no “integrity violations.” You’re done! (Click image to enlarge it.) In my experience, 80% of all problems will be solved at this point, so the odds are in your favor that you won’t have to keep going. But if DISM can’t fix your Windows image, or SFC can’t or won’t make repairs to your system files, proceed to Step 2. Step 2: Try a recent restore point or image backupA restore point is a snapshot of a Windows PC’s OS state from a specific point in time. If enabled, the Windows System Restore capability can create and maintain restore points on your behalf. To see if this is an option on your target machine, type restore point into the Windows 10 search box. The System Properties window should open to the System Protection tab, shown in Figure 5. Figure 5: Access available restore points using the “System Restore…” button. To look at restore points, you must work through the System Restore wizard. Click the System Restore... button to launch the wizard, then click the Next button on the first pane of the wizard to see a list of restore points available to you. (If you don’t like what you see, or you don’t see something from before your troubles started on this machine, click the Show more restore points checkbox for a complete list of what’s available to you.) Click the restore point to which you would like to revert. Figure 6 shows the lone restore point available on my test PC. Figure 6: For this story, I created a restore point named “Test restore point.” Because I have only one restore point — I don’t use them much any more, for reasons I’ll explain coming up — I picked that item to show you what appears when you select a restore point in this utility. If you click the Scan for affected programs button it will tell you if any programs or drivers will be affected by rolling back to the restore point you’ve selected. In this case, there’s no impact, as shown in Figure 7. If something were to be affected, it would show up in either the top or bottom list in that results pane. Figure 7: The current restore point has no impact. But older restore points will provide a list of drivers and programs that need to be reinstalled if you revert to that restore point. It usually takes between 5 and 15 minutes to revert to a restore point. The amount of additional effort to catch back up to where you left off depends on the number of items that need to be installed or updated, as shown in Figure 7. This can take from minutes to an hour or more depending on size and scope. All this said, I don’t use Restore Points anymore. I’ve run into occasional issues with failed restores, and I’ve seen plenty of discussion in Microsoft Community and TenForums among other users who’ve had similar problems. My preference is to restore an image built using Macrium Reflect (free or commercial; I use both). It’s faster than System Restore, and I’ve never been unable to restore a valid, integrity-checked Reflect backup. You decide what’s best for you; I use Reflect. Restoring an image backup is much like reverting to a restore point: choose the image (usually by date and time) to which you’d like to roll back, then initiate the restore procedure. For example, Macrium Reflect offers a “Restore” menu, then allows you to browse stored backup files to pick the one you want in an Explorer-based Open window. If reverting to a restore point or image backup doesn’t work (or you don’t have either of these), it’s time to move on to Step 3. |
