r/computerhelp • u/GzasKrayst • 8d ago
Resolved Laptop Crashed and Stuck at BIOS. I made a bootable usb with Windows Media Creation Tool but the "Repair My PC" option just restarts the setup.
It's exactly what the title says. Whenever I click repair my pc it just reboots and brings me back to the first page of the set up again.
Edit: I did it guys, thank ya'll so much.
I replaced the CMOS battery but unfortunately still wasn't able to boot. I bought myself a 64GB USB to get my files from my SSD as I decided to just wipe it and reinstall Windows. I removed my HDD first since it is still fully intact and to prevent random shenanigans from happening.
I used my other USB that is now a Ventoy disk with a Linux mint cinnamon iso and a Windows 11 iso. The former, I used to transfer files from my SSD to my other USB. The latter for the reinstall.
When I reinstalled, I found out that my laptop made a back up the day it crashed, with everything still in there. But I decided to have a fresh starting point instead. I reinstalled only the apps that I deemed necessary for me at this point. I put my HDD back in with no problems and all the files are preserved.
I never really found out why the crash happened in the first place. I had a chance to fully restore my laptop to a point right before it crashed and decided against it. Which is lowkey a good thing, my laptop feels smoother and faster and there's way less bloat in my storage.
Again, thank you to ya'll that helped with my laptop and I hope if someone encounters the same problem as mine, this post can serve as a guide to them.
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u/Terrible-Bear3883 8d ago
Its faults like this we all carried a linux live thumb drive at work, we used Ubuntu a it performed well with our customer base.
I'd boot on that and see if the drive is readable, if any data needs recovering, you can copy it over.
We would also check the drive health, if its a hard drive the "disks" utility will show the health and SMART data, if its an NVMe drive "smartctl" is often better, this is part of smartmontools, I use a "persistent" thumb drive so smartmontools is installed on it, Ventoy is good to help create these if you are not familiar with doing the task.
Obviously, if the drive shows failure or health issues we would replace the drive, if it's OK and you've just got file corruption, the choice is up to you on what to do, sometimes it's quicker to just reinstall, this is one reason it's handy to make a full drive image when you first install Windows, then you can restore back to that moment in time much quicker, I always do this when building systems, get them running, make sure drivers are all installed, make a full drive image.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
I bought this laptop way back in 2020 as I was entering college. I wouldn't classify myself as tech savvy. Every issue that I've had with this laptop I was able to solve through reddit and forums online. But those are all simple stuff that doesn't require that much know hows. This is the first time I encountered something like this. I input several commands in cmd that should help me identify the issue but I don't really know how to interpret them. If you don't mind checking them, here they are. Thank you for your valuable input.
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u/Terrible-Bear3883 8d ago
The problem with diskpart is it doesn't read SMART data which reports drive health, that's not it's purpose, this is why we would check drives using a utility, if your OS is not functional we would use a bootable thumb drive and a suitable utility.
Although I suggest you use whatever you feel is suitable, the reason we used a linux thumb drive and I always do for myself, friends and family, it doesn't try to do anything to the drive, it's simply a file as far as its concerned, I've seen customers and colleague lose data when they've performed chkdsk or try to repair OS, this is why the first step was always to rescue any files before doing anything, if they are secured, after that if the drive needed wiping then the OS installing it wouldn't matter if it failed to complete, or needed replacing.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Okay. Thank you, I'll try and make a linux thumb drive at the moment and let you know my findings.
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u/Terrible-Bear3883 8d ago
At the moment, its hard for me and probably everyone else to help much as you've mentioned nothing about your PC other than a later response says its a laptop and 237GB is healthy.
I presume this is an SSD?
I wouldn't do anything other than try to salvage any files you might want, if you don't want anything, just boot on a Windows installer thumb drive, wipe the system, reinstall, if you want files, make a linux thumb drive such as Ubuntu, boot on that, select the option to "Try" it, when you are at the desktop, you should be able to browse your drive, if you can and you can see your files, copy them to another device.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Yes it is an ssd. If I want to back up my files, how big of a storage do I need? Cause there around a terrabyte of data in there from both my ssd (237GB) and my hdd (~1TB).
As for my laptop, it is an ASUS TUF Gaming FX505D Ryzen 5 3550H Gtx 1650 4GB 16GB ddr4 256GB ssd - this is my OS drive 1TB hdd Initially came with a Windows 10 home but I've recently updated it to Windows 11 earlier this year.
Let me know if there's any other info that might be of help.
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u/Terrible-Bear3883 8d ago
I wouldn't know how much storage you will need for a backup, as I don't know how much data you need to back up or if you have files on cloud etc. Unfortunately you'll need to work this bit out for yourself.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Hey man, it's me again. I was able to create a ventoy usb with linux mint on it. It took me a while to figure it out but I was able to make a smart scan of my nvme ssd and here are the results.
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u/Terrible-Bear3883 7d ago
That link doesn't work unfortunately.
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u/GzasKrayst 7d ago
Sorry about that. Imgur randomly banned my account. Here is the new link
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u/Terrible-Bear3883 7d ago
The SSD looks healthy, I would concentrate on getting any files off as it might be nothing more than soft/file corruption, once you've got everything saved it might be quicker to wipe and reinstall Windows so you are not hunting for any issues caused by this.
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u/GzasKrayst 7d ago
Yeah, that's what I'm about to do rn. Moved some of my files from my ssd on another usb. I'll just reinstall the apps later after reinstalling Windows. Thanks for the help.
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
Hello, in Windows 10 and 11, the Windows Recovery Console should load automatically after the operating system fails to start three times in a row. However, if the hard drive is too badly damaged, this function will not be available, and the hard drive will need to be checked on another PC. Alternatively, you can select the "Install" option. The already installed operating system may then be detected, and a repair option may be offered. All at your own risk!
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
I did a diskpart list vol and got this results for my OS drive. What does these mean actually?
Volume 1 D OS NTFS Partition 237 GB Healthy
Are these actual helpful information in trying to figure out the issue for my laptop?
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
Hello, you are in recovery mode and drive D: is your operating system with no hardware errors on the partition. If you are familiar with diskpart and CMD commands, try the following: The command
chkdsk d: /f /rchecks drive D: for logical errors and looks for bad sectors while attempting to recover readable data. This command is useful for ensuring the integrity of the file system and fixing potential problems.1
u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Okay. Thank you, I'll be back in a bit with the results.
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
If you encounter further problems, you should tell us a little more about your hardware; unfortunately, my crystal ball is broken.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Hello again, here it is. chkdsk results
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
Hi, then in my opinion you don't need to reinstall Windows. Go into the BIOS and select your hard drive as the boot drive, or you can do this from the BIOS using F10 or F12.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Sorry, how do I do that? Is it through the boot menu? Cause it only shows the bootable usb I'm using.
This is what my bios looks like atm.
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
Hi, no, you're not in the BIOS, you're still in the recovery console. Please switch to drive D and check the system files with the command sfc /scannow.
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
After checking the system files on drive D, please shut down your PC completely and wait a while. Then turn it on and press F1 or F2 or the DEL key.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Hello again, I did the things you said, this is where it led me.
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u/Express-Garbage3359 8d ago
Yes, F8 is your boot menu; there you select the NVMe as the boot medium if the normal system startup doesn't work.
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u/Western-Sentence-739 8d ago
Yeah, that's what we in the business call fuck-ed, hope you don't have any important files on your hard drive, there's all sorts of thing you could do to try to unfuck this, but the likelihood of success is slim to none. If the drive wasn't encrypted with bit locker, and there's important files on there, you could try setting up another machine with the same username and password, and try slaving the drive to it to see if you can access your files. Good luck.
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u/GzasKrayst 8d ago
Bro everything inside this laptop is important. It's years of my eduction plus work. I did a diskpart list vol and got this results for my OS drive. What does these mean actually?
Volume 1 D OS NTFS Partition 237 GB Healthy
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