Thanks for explaining it. Here's the screenshots you asked for.
Windows 10 finally booted to desktop after 4 hours of freezing on boot. What do I do so that this doesn't happen tomorrow?
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(128, 8%, 22%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3EA%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Anonymous
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
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
54 answers
Sort by: Oldest
-
Anonymous
2024-07-25T08:34:32+00:00 -
![](data:image/svg+xml, %3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' height='64' class='font-weight-bold' style='font: 600 30.11764705882353px "SegoeUI", Arial' width='64'%3E%3Ccircle fill='hsl(86.4, 71%, 18%)' cx='32' cy='32' r='32' /%3E%3Ctext x='50%25' y='55%25' dominant-baseline='middle' text-anchor='middle' fill='%23FFF' %3ERS%3C/text%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Ramesh Srinivasan 87,965 Reputation points Independent Advisor2024-07-25T08:41:18+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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Anonymous
2024-07-26T09:13:20+00:00 Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t see an option to disable individual drives in the BIOS. Maybe this motherboard doesn’t have this option.
I have a B550 Aorus Pro AC.
BTW it froze before it could get to the chkdsk step, am I able to run it from the command line in the recovery environment when I eventually manage to get there without freezing?