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
    2024-07-29T12:41:25+00:00

    This does sound like a hardware issue. It's either the OS drive (where chkdsk hung up) or the system board.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-07-29T10:48:14+00:00

    Hm…even booting from USB froze. Does this mean it’s a hardware problem?

    EDIT: Detached everything except for the USB and the NVME and it managed to booth into WinRE

    EDIT2: It froze soon after I made the first edit which brings me back to the first question. Does this sound like a hardware problem?

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  3. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,965 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-07-29T10:38:29+00:00

    The chkdsk operation stalled during Stage 4 on the C drive. So, I'd clean install Windows on a new drive.

    Before that, to backup files from those drives to another drive, you can boot into WinRE using a USB setup disk and run notepad.exe in WinRE Command Prompt. Using Notepad's file open as dialog, browse to the C drive and copy/paste the files to another hard disk.

    This should help.

    Rescue Files when Windows Won't Start - Microsoft Community:

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

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-07-29T10:32:30+00:00

    I understand, but with all drives attached it’s still freezing on boot. In order for me to change those settings I have to keep hitting restart until it decides to let me in.

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  5. Ramesh Srinivasan 87,965 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2024-07-29T10:30:13+00:00

    As I stated earlier, the procedure should be done before detaching the drives. You may reattach them and turn off the paging file on those drives.

    Also, reset the user shell folder locations (e.g., Documents, Music, Videos, etc) to default, if you've configured them to point to those drives.

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