Windows 10 finally booted to desktop after 4 hours of freezing on boot. What do I do so that this doesn't happen tomorrow?

Anonymous
2024-07-25T02:30:12+00:00

My computer restarted overnight (assuming from an update) and froze on the boot screen where it shows the motherboard logo. It's also been freezing at the 'Preparing Automatic Repair' screen about 9/10 times.

I've tried resetting the CMOS by unplugging the power cord and holding down the power button, but it didn't help.

The few times I managed to access the troubleshooting tools and the command prompt I tried the bootrec /fixboot commands but I ran into the problem of "Path not found" at the attrib c:\boot\bcd -h -r -s step. On the final restart before I was about to plug in the bootable USB to reinstall windows, it booted to desktop with everything working as normal.

I feel like this is only temporary and I'll run into the same problem the next time it restarts. What do I need to check/fix so that this problem doesn't happen again? Or do I just need to bite the bullet and do a fresh install of Windows?

(I'm not sure if this was due to my fiddling around but I now have 2 recovery partitions on my C drive, and an addition EFI System Partition on an external HDD.)

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,965 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-07-25T09:12:37+00:00

    Yes, please disable or disable them one at a time to test. If there are other peripherals, disconnect them as well.

    Related case:

    In a recent case, the problem was caused by an external drive with a bad block. It's not a slow boot issue but a slow shutdown issue, though.

    https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-07-25T09:06:21+00:00

    No errors in the startup repair logs.

    3 of the drives are external, so definitely detachable. WRT disabling them in UEFI, I won't know until the next time I reboot. If it is possible, is the process to disable them one by one and rebooting until it's successful?

    I'll also have to run chkdsk later. I still need the PC for work tomorrow, and I can't risk it not booting again.

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  3. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,965 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-07-25T08:41:18+00:00

    Thanks. To see the startup repair log entries, please open:

    C:\WINDOWS\System32\Logfiles\Srt\SrtTrail.txt

    If any errors are reported in the log, please post the information here.

    Will it be possible to physically detach some drives or disable them in UEFI to see if one of them causes the problem?

    Run "chkdsk c: /r" and schedule it to run during the next reboot when prompted.

    Note:

    Rebuilding the EFI and boot files needs to be done via WinRE. It can't be done from Windows because EFI is will be in use.

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-07-25T08:34:32+00:00

    Thanks for explaining it. Here's the screenshots you asked for.

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  5. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,965 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-07-25T08:16:54+00:00

    We can try rebuilding the BCD. But pre-boot shouldn't take that much time. If it can't find the BCD or boot files, it usually shows an error message right away. However, it's like trying hard to find the storage device or enumerate some other peripheral during the pre-boot phase.

    Secondly, if the boot files are corrupt, the problem will be consistent; it can't be erratic, based on my experience.

    Please post a screenshot of Disk Management. Also, post the output of these commands from an admin Command Prompt.

    bcdedit
diskpart
list disk
list vol

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