UKH

Left the laptop on last night and bobbed downstairs for half an hour. When I got back an automatic update had started and it said 'windows is configuring updates. Etc' and that 30% was complete... Then it restarted.... And seems to have died. It stayed on a black screen with the little hamster wheel spinning at the bottom and wouldnt restart.

Left it for a couple of hours... Then eventually did a manual hard power down. Restarted it manually, and the same happens.

Tried holding down shift after powering it on to get to the safe mode boot screen, but I don't think it's actually getting that far. Just the black screen and the little hamster wheel. 

Any suggestions, short of hitting it with a large wrench?

Also tried holding down F8 after restarting as I remember that can get you to the boot menu. No joy

In reply to ThunderCat:

This may be a long shot, but try taking the battery out of the laptop and removing the power source from the laptop.

Turn the laptop on. Nothing should happen. Now put the battery back in and try powering on the laptop. it may/may not work.

Is there any way that you can get into the BIOS?

You should at least be able to get into this before Windows 10 boots up.

In reply to The Lemming:

No joy , but thanks for the attempt. Argh

All I'm getting is the initial black screen with the hp logo and the hamster wheel for a few seconds, then a completely black screen with the hamster wheel. There's about thirty seconds of hard drive sounds, whirring etc..... Then it stops. Just the ever turning hamster wheel... 

In reply to ThunderCat:

You able to get into the BIOS?

In reply to The Lemming:

No idea how to do that. You mean by holding down the shift key? Nope

In reply to ThunderCat:Theres normally an f key that will get you to the bios, but i cant remember it - f3, f4?

In reply to wbo:

It can be f2, f8 or f12

One of those buttons should get you to the BIOS

In reply to The Lemming:

Tried f8.... Will give the others a whirl... 

In reply to ThunderCat:

What version of Windows did it have? 

What model of laptop is it?

What's your priority? Recovering the files that were on there, getting it working again, or both?

Do you have any CDs/DVDs or special USB pen which might have come with it when it was new?

In reply to Jack B:

Probably should have mentioned that eh 😊. Windows 10. Hp laptop, not sure what model. Ideally get it back up and running the way it was, but more than happy to do a factory reset. All photos and stuff are backed up on to an external hard drive. 

In reply to The Lemming:

Mmm... F2 had taken me to a hardware diagnostic menu!  Let me tinker... 

In reply to ThunderCat:

I've screwed Windows 10 loads of times. This version of the OS has some cool recovery features.

If you can't get to the BIOS to you have access to other computers?

Do you have a windows 10 disk, or have a way of downloading it onto a USB stick?

You could then use those recovery tools.

In reply to The Lemming:

The system bios rollback failed

Bios image file specified did not pass validation. 

Now, wheres me hammer... 

In reply to The Lemming:

F12 took me to a diagnostic menu... And it seems to be restoring out back to its status as of April 24th....sounds promising... 

In reply to ThunderCat:

Mine did exactly same last week.....tried everything including unplugging battery.....have given up and returned to the stoneage

In reply to doz:

The system restore thing is running now... I've got everything crossed......

In reply to ThunderCat:

I recently had a windows update that did not go well. This year it's been like Russian roulette not knowing what the outcome will be.

My suggestion would be to learn how to make clones with something like Acronis. So, if things go tits up then you can get a working OS in 30 minutes or less.

In reply to ThunderCat:

There's some odd features in the new versions of Windows where that identical boots have to fail I think 3 times in a row and then it tries to roll stuff back, so sometimes messing with the BIOS n function keys does more harm than good, and eventually it works it out itself if you keep on restarting it.

Frustrating to watch though.

In reply to The Lemming:

Three more reboots... A very slow login.... And we're back again! Brilliant. The F12 option seems to have done the trick.

Massive thanks to everyone for their help! 

In reply to ThunderCat: if you get chance could you walk me through the " f12 thing " ?  , I read this thread because later today I have  to turn my windows 10 ho laptop on to do some  fairly basic chores . I try to avoid doing this ( turning the thing on) , because every 3rd or 4 th time I do ,something odd happens that brings me close to feeding it to my  neighbours wood chipper . 

In reply to mike123:

I'll be honest, it was mostly flying blind and guesswork. Basically as soon as I hit the power button, I pressed F12 and held it down. Rather than continue to the 'black screen and hamster wheel', it jumped into what I assume is the bios menu... Looked like a very old windows environment GUI?

Not many options but there was a clear option to roll back to different update points... The only one that was showing was one from May 2nd, but there was an option to 'show older updates'. Did this and chose one a little further back (Apr 26).

Took about an hour to restore files... Windows progress bar showing. Did a restart, managed to get logged on but had lots of error messages telling me various files and dll's weren't available. Did another  few restart.. Very very slow, but after the last one it seems to be stable and back to normal!

Hope this helps? 

In reply to ThunderCat:

The f12 is the limit of my technical skills.

However I suggest you download a copy of Windows 10 and put into a USB stick. It will have more tools to fix any further problems. From memory it can reinstall a fresh OS while keeping your data safe.

Next task is to learn how to use something like Paragon or Acronis to make copies of your operating system in the setup of your choice with all your software choices.

Then when things go tits up you can reinstall that version of your OS. Think of it like the steroid version of System Restore.