Windows 8 is stuck in an automatic repair loop

Anonymous

My windows 8 get in a automatic repair loop and it couldn't repair it. And than it says log file d:\windows\system32\logfiles\srt\srttrail.txt

What to do?

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Anonymous

do a selective boot up with bios

get cmd to open and check

bootrec /fixMBR

bootrec /Fixboot

bootrec /rebuildBCD

and also

chkdsk /r c:

chkdsk /r d:

chkdsk /r e:

chkdsk /r f:

then let repair go thowe again and should be stoped

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hello Coonut,

Thank you for your reply,

I would suggest you to login to any other computer and create a Windows 8 installation disk. Using that disk you can perform the troubleshooting methods given below.

Refer the link to create the installation disk:

How to create installation media for a PC refresh or reset:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/create-reset-refresh-media

Hope the information helps.

Please reply with the results, in order to help you fix the issue.

Wish u a Happy New Year!

Thank you

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280 additional answers

Anonymous

2012-11-09T18:06:28+00:00

I have the same problem, and nothing in this page worked so far. I don't know whatelse to do. Even if I choose the "don't restart in case of error" option, it restarts over and over again. Please come up with a working solution!
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Anonymous

2012-11-06T02:52:49+00:00

Had same problem with my windows 8 install. Powered off my laptop (hp dv6c) during boot once (not during an update) as I was going to turn on virtualisation in the bios, but missed hitting f10 in time. Silly impatience.

Then would boot straight to an automatic repair loop, srttrail.txt containing zero errors.

Tried the usual fix mbr type operations and check the partitions, various stuff for 4 hours or so. Nothing helped.

I was funnily able to get it to boot to my pre-upgrade windows 7, though it was really slow and not detected as genuine (fair enough as had upgraded from it). Was enough to get a external disk attached and xcopy everything over.

Then I reinstalled win 8.

I didn't format when I reinstalled, and found that all my files, etc were still there in the c:\windows.old\users... . Program files, etc of course wiped. Other folders on c:\ survived (I had a couple of VMs in a folder c:\VMs for example). So you may find even if you can't get a backup, most your files can live on if you don't format.
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Anonymous

2012-11-06T00:22:44+00:00

Same problem here. No matter what I do, it goes back to the "automatic repair" screen and then fails. Even if i select safe modes from the recovery menu, it still starts "automatic repair", I find it hard to believe they could launch an OS like this without any way to reliably get back into the OS.

I also contacted tech support, they took me through various options, "refresh" (which fails), system restore (which is off as I have a SSD), safe modes and burning a Win8 install disk and booting from that (gives same exact results as the regular recovery menu). They concluded the only way to fix was to re-install windows from scratch. Great.

Definitely regretting my decision to upgrade my Windows 7 laptop to Windows 8... now I potentially face losing all my data (luckily I have a lot of it backed up in the cloud but likely not all of it).

My solution right now is to try and boot Ubuntu, see if I can recover my data and then format the thing back to factory with Windows 7.

For those who stumble on this thread, I have a HP Envy 14 laptop... it does not work well with Windows 8 (no good drivers for the video card which leads to poor battery life and no way to use the 3d graphics card).
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