ASUS stuck on Automatic Repair

[Sos55]

Thank you for any assistance.
My ASUS C550CB is stuck on Automatic Repair. I use windows 8 and do not have discs.

I have searched similar threads here and elsewhere and looked on Asus website. I have managed to get a bit further but Automatic Repair does not work. I can get into Advanced Options and Troubleshoot. I tried Refresh and it failed. In desperation I tried Reset and chose restore only the drive windows is on (there is a C and D drive. It went about 60% through and then failed.

I can click Startup setting but when it restarts it just goes to auto repair again.
I can get into Command Prompt but no idea what to input.

My experience level is I can follow instructions well but not a tech guru.

 

[WyomingKnott]

To whoever solves this for the OP:

I've seen a lot of these threads lately. Installation hangs for three hours and then loops. Automatic Repair runs and won't let you do anything else. Is there a general explanation as to why this is happening and why it's so frequent? Or is it rare and we're just seeing all of the cases here? Thanks.

 

[Harrison Whitmarsh]

Hello Sos55, and welcome to Toms!

I first want to talk about what Automatic Repair is before we jump into the fun stuff, hope you don't mind! Automatic Repair was a program built to fix and edit your BCD (boot configuration) a while back. The idea behind it was that if your hard drive runs into an issue with the order in which it should boot, it can repair itself with Automatic Repair and re-order the boot sequence.

I believe the reason we are seeing more of these has to do with the change from Windows 7 to Windows 8, as they changed the boot software from Legacy to UEFI, which makes post non-existent (GRRR). Basically your machine now no longer boots in an order chosen in the BIOS, but by another chip whose job is to choose what to do. (The change to UEFI only exists on machines shipped with Windows 8, just for clarification.)

Now, to the problem. Can you get to the "Advanced Startup" screen for Windows 8 that looks like this? :
http://www.techspot.com/images/teaser/win8%20advanced%20boot%20menu%20story.jpg

If you can, then we are in luck. If you cannot, and there is no way out of the loop, then you WILL need a Windows 8 installation/repair disk to fix the issue.

If you can, we are going to use BOOTREC to fix your problem, hope you are ready!
Step 1: Open up Command Prompt (CMD) from Advanced Startup.
Step 2: Type in the following lines, and press Enter after each line:
bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /Fixboot
bootrec /rebuildBCD
Step 3: I highly recomend doing a Check Disk on your OS drive just to make sure that everything is where it should be. Type this into Command Prompt and hit enter again.
chkdsk /r c:
Step 4: Restart, and then Magic.

The process I listed above should work without a hitch, unless there is a bigger issue at hand. Possible Issues: your Windows 8 install could be corrupted and that is what is making Automatic Repair freeze; your HDD has bad sectors and Automatic Repair is trying to pull data from one of those sectors thus freezing; your BCD is too badly damaged to repair and the only option is a complete reformat. There are manypossibilities, but who knows until you try that first thing.



- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

 

[Sos55]

Thank you very much for the clear information. i could get to that screen and ran the commands. after rebuild Bcd it says successfully scanned but Total identified Windows installations 0
i ran the chkdsk as well. It verified files with 0 bad but on verifying indexes an unspecified error occured

i rebooted but it went back to automatic repair and cannot repair. Am I correct that I will need a disc ? I do have a desktop Asus win 8 with a recovery disc but the ultrabook of course doesnt have one.

Hello Sos55, and welcome to Toms!

I first want to talk about what Automatic Repair is before we jump into the fun stuff, hope you don't mind! Automatic Repair was a program built to fix and edit your BCD (boot configuration) a while back. The idea behind it was that if your hard drive runs into an issue with the order in which it should boot, it can repair itself with Automatic Repair and re-order the boot sequence.

I believe the reason we are seeing more of these has to do with the change from Windows 7 to Windows 8, as they changed the boot software from Legacy to UEFI, which makes post non-existent (GRRR). Basically your machine now no longer boots in an order chosen in the BIOS, but by another chip whose job is to choose what to do. (The change to UEFI only exists on machines shipped with Windows 8, just for clarification.)

Now, to the problem. Can you get to the "Advanced Startup" screen for Windows 8 that looks like this? :
http://www.techspot.com/images/teaser/win8%20advanced%20boot%20menu%20story.jpg

If you can, then we are in luck. If you cannot, and there is no way out of the loop, then you WILL need a Windows 8 installation/repair disk to fix the issue.

If you can, we are going to use BOOTREC to fix your problem, hope you are ready!
Step 1: Open up Command Prompt (CMD) from Advanced Startup.
Step 2: Type in the following lines, and press Enter after each line:
bootrec /fixMBR
bootrec /Fixboot
bootrec /rebuildBCD
Step 3: I highly recomend doing a Check Disk on your OS drive just to make sure that everything is where it should be. Type this into Command Prompt and hit enter again.
chkdsk /r c:
Step 4: Restart, and then Magic.

The process I listed above should work without a hitch, unless there is a bigger issue at hand. Possible Issues: your Windows 8 install could be corrupted and that is what is making Automatic Repair freeze; your HDD has bad sectors and Automatic Repair is trying to pull data from one of those sectors thus freezing; your BCD is too badly damaged to repair and the only option is a complete reformat. There are manypossibilities, but who knows until you try that first thing.


- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

 

[Harrison Whitmarsh]

Hello again Sos55!

Well dang! I was hoping that Check Disk was going to help. Tell you what, try ONE more thing. Get back into CMD, and type in:
sfc /scannow

SFC stands for System File Checker, and by doing /scannow it will scan for any damaged or incorrect files and fix them. See if that helps.

Chat with you soon!

- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

 

[Sos55]

Hello again Sos55!

Well dang! I was hoping that Check Disk was going to help. Tell you what, try ONE more thing. Get back into CMD, and type in:
sfc /scannow

SFC stands for System File Checker, and by doing /scannow it will scan for any damaged or incorrect files and fix them. See if that helps.

Chat with you soon!

- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

unfortunately I get " Windows resource protection could not start the repair service"
i have an extended warranty with JB hifi but thye cant find something so have to wait two business days for them to get back to me and they say of course wa,rranty doesnt cover softwar,e. I rang asus direct and they say it sounds like the recovery partition thye have preinstalled has been corrupted and it will need that and windows reinstalled but they cant do it without me paying as it is out of the year warranty.
I am sure you can guess I am not happy lol. given the number of people who seem to be having this error I will be fighting to have it repaired free but wish I just had a windows disc to do it myself as it is a huge inconvenience.
I really appreciate your help Harrison
PS I know now I could have made my own recovery disc or used their backtracker or somehting but I didn't know that before. if you have Asus laptop look into it. i don' t really think when you buy a laptop preinstalled you should have to do extra things to ensure you can recover things. it should be simple we buy them to use them not to become computer technicians.