Windows 10 won't boot: what to do at home

Windows 10 loading failure is an uncommon event, but it often happens in cases where a computer is urgently needed. To prevent this situation from taking the user by surprise, you need to prepare for it in advance.

Let's look at what to do if Windows 10 won't boot, why this happens, and what information all users should know to solve this problem as quickly as possible.

If you need professional help repairing a laptop or recovering hard drive information, then our service center is at your service.

Why won't Windows 10 boot?

The reasons why the “top ten” does not load are divided into hardware and software. Software-type problems are associated with damage (deletion) of system and boot files and/or those responsible for starting the registry. Here problems often arise due to:

The presence of “clumsy” applications in autostart. Errors and crashes occur at later stages of the boot process - shortly before the desktop appears.
Faulty hardware drivers. In these cases, the download may be interrupted by a blue screen of death, in some cases indicating the name of the driver that is causing the problem.
Viruses and antiviruses. Don't be surprised, even antiviruses are just as time-consuming as viruses if you use them thoughtlessly.
Windows updates installed incorrectly or the computer shuts down while updates are being installed.
The use of various “tweak cleaners”, which are used to decorate and speed up the system. They can “accidentally” change the registry keys responsible for startup, patch files, etc.
Unskilled manual editing of the system registry.
Experiments with disk partitions - formatting, partitioning, merging, compression, etc. A common error for this is “Bootmgr is compressed,” which means the system boot loader is compressed.

Installing another OS in another partition of the drive. The new operating system replaces the old bootloader with its own.

Hardware reasons for Windows 10 not starting include:

Failure of video subsystem elements. In this case, Windows may load, but the user will not see it because of the black screen. In some cases, you can find out that the system has fully booted using a characteristic sound.
Malfunction of RAM, which manifests itself as blue screens and reboots at any startup step.
Poor connection or faulty system drive. It often appears with the message “Bootmgr is missing,” which means the system boot loader is unavailable, on a black screen. In some cases, BSoDs, restarts, stops at any loading step.

A situation in which the disk is connected to the wrong interface on the motherboard. If a failure occurs after removing and reinstalling the hard drive into the computer, then the problem manifests itself as a blue screen and INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE failure.

Violation of the order of polling BIOS bootable media. The computer begins searching for the Windows bootloader, for example, on flash drives, and not on the system hard drive.
Other hardware problems, such as malfunction of peripherals, motherboard, power supply, etc.

What to prepare for?

Approximately 80 - 90% of all cases of Windows 10 not starting are due to system failures. Let's consider methods of dealing with them.

To restore normal operation of the operating system, you should boot the PC into the recovery environment. If you have used Windows 7 before, you should know that this environment is installed together with the main system. To enter it, you need to open the section for additional boot methods (after turning on the laptop, press F8) and go to the “Troubleshooting” menu.

The recovery environment is also available in the “top ten”, but when compared with Windows 7, the OS loading time has significantly decreased. The interval for calling the boot menu has also become shorter. At this time, you still have time to press the desired key combination (F8 + Shift) in the following case: when installing the system on an MBR standard hard drive, and in the power settings of your laptop or PC, you need to disable the fast startup option. If the system is installed on a GPT hard drive or SSD, then a boot drive will be required.

To restore an emergency Windows 10, it will be effective to keep on a flash drive or DVD the official distribution kit of the same capacity as that installed on the computer. As an alternative, you can use a downloadable package with utilities.

As an example, we will use the home edition of Windows 10, which is installed on a bootable USB flash drive. It has everything you need.

Booting into the Windows 10 recovery environment

If there is a failure in downloading “ten”, then it tries to self-heal. If the system manages to do this successfully, the user will not see any notifications on the screen. The computer startup process itself will take longer than usual. If unsuccessful, the message below may appear on the screen.

More often, just a “Malevich square” appears with or without a cursor. There may be a blue screen of death, which shows a sad emoji.

The screenshot shows a crash case that is considered relatively benign. If we click on “Advanced options”, we will go to the recovery environment that is installed on the hard drive. Thus, there is no need to boot into it using external media. But now we will consider the most difficult case, when the system does not show signs of working condition.

The media should be connected to the computer, reboot, go to BIOS settings and mark it as the first boot device.

After loading from a flash drive (DVD), a window will open where you will be asked to decide on the system language. If Russian is specified, then click on “Next”.

Then you will be prompted to start installing or restoring Windows. Click on “System Restore”.

The “Select Action” window will appear, where we click on “Troubleshooting”. Now we are in the right place.

Windows 10 startup recovery options

The recovery options menu (section “Advanced options”) has five subsections:

System Restore. If this option is selected, the standard Windows utility rstrui.exe will be launched. Its purpose is to roll back the system to one of the control points that were saved.
Restoring the system image. Here the wizard for deploying an operating system from a backup copy, which was created by Windows itself, is launched.
Boot recovery. Errors in boot partitions and files are being corrected.
Command line. Allows you to launch various system utilities.
Return to the previous build. A rollback is made to the previously installed version of the operating system if it was updated to Windows 10.

Rollback to a checkpoint

The best first aid remedy is to return to a control point that was created recently. The method is effective for various types of system failures, even if you do not know the reason.

If you click on the first item, the recovery utility starts. It should indicate the time and date for which you want to rollback, and then follow the instructions on the monitor.

To use this option, you must have at least 1 saved checkpoint, and the system restore function must work properly. If the latter was disabled before the failure, then this step is skipped and other methods are used.

Startup Recovery

This option works effectively if boot files are damaged or deleted. This can happen when installing an additional operating system on another partition of the disk after Windows 10. The problem can happen when accidentally formatting or other manipulations in the “System Reserved” menu.

Return to previous build

The recovery method is available for a short time (from 10 to 30 days depending on the license conditions) after updating Windows 7 or 8 to the tenth version. This option is possible if the files of the previous OS are saved and located in the Windows.old folder.

When downgrading to a previously installed build, all of the user's personal files will be intact, but any actions taken since the upgrade will be undone.

Restoring a system image

By restoring an image from a backup company, you can return the system to a working state in case of any problems. The only problem is that almost no one creates such images.

If you have a relatively recent backup copy, then you need to select the item marked in the screenshot:

Then you need to tell the program the path to the image and follow the instructions provided.

All data from the inoperative operating system will be replaced with working backup copies. This will also affect user files, if they are included in it.

Command line

The command line itself does not restore the system, but it allows you to launch other tools. Using it, you can open Windows Explorer to see the installation location (in the recovery environment, the partition letters usually do not match those indicated during normal boot). You can run bootloader repair utilities, a registry editor, and tools to fix errors in system files.

You can boot Windows 10 using the BCDBoot console utility. It is capable of re-creating a hidden partition called “Reserved by the system”, and copies boot files from the Windows directory to it.

For BCDBoot to work correctly, you must specify the path to the Windows folder on the hard drive. This can be found out using the Diskpart utility, but it can be done through Explorer.

To go to Explorer, you need to open the command line and launch notepad in it (notepad).

In notepad, you need to go to “File”, select “Open” and go to “This PC”. Next, you need to go through the disk partitions and decide where the system directory is located. In our example it is D.

Then we return to the command line to execute the instruction:

BCDboot D:\Windows.

In most cases, this will be enough for Windows 10 to start.