Question Really Need Help - cannot boot from USB to reinstall Windows to fix “Preparing Automatic Repair”

[jacksyee]

Hi All,

Happy new year, really need help.

I was using my PC and I was having trouble logging into an online game so I was going to reboot the PC. Malwarebytes was running. Very strange as I couldn’t stop the scan or kill the program from Tasks window. Not sure if that matters. I just hardware reset the PC .

I then got the “preparing Automatic repair” screen forever as I have seen is common on the internet. Tried many things to fix it from googling, no avail so was jut going to reinstall windows. I made an install USB on my laptop. I booted to it (I can still get to BIOS) and instead of going to the windows install screen it said “repairing drive E” - which was the USB. I was confused. After a while I was able to log on to my normal windows install on my M2 drive. Strange.

I then rebooted normally to see if it was fixed (perhaps dumb I know) and it wasn’t - I am back to where I started with the exception that the USB drive will not repeat what it did before, it will not take me to the windows install screen, it just does the loading screen with the 5 dots going in a circle forever.

I then tested the USB on the laptop - it works normally there - I can boot it and get to the windows install screen as expected.

I cannot get to the windows repair directory by hitting f8 - it just takes me to the boot select screen. I took the M2 drive out and tested it on my laptop via enclosure - worked fine. I reinstalled windows on it via laptop and reinstalled it in my PC (which is a massive pain as I need to remove the hard shell water lines and take out the GPU to get to the M2 slot- managed to dump a bunch of fluid on my PSU and had to leave it next to the space heater all night - luckily no harm done)

Tried again no change - goes into preparing to repair loop/same thing with USB

Took the M2 out again and formatted it - put it back in - same thing.

So the weird part is that it still gives me the option to boot from the M12 drive via windows boot manager but there is no windows left to boot from on that drive (I formatted it - it is empty)

So I think something strange like it’s not even getting to the part where it really tries to boot or something but I’m truly at a loss.

I updated Bios too - Screenshots:

https://imgur.com/a/LVOyAGY

System (Not overclocked now)

I9 10900 KF*3700
64GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator 3200Mhz
MSI RTX 4090
Asus Hero Maximus Xii Wifi
Asus BIOS UEFI 2801

The PC in question (I know it’s ugly RN)

https://imgur.com/a/e3Hy7g5

Any ideas?

 

[dwd999]

Look in the Tool menu of your bios. Do you have an option to Secure Erase your m.2 drive? Using that might be better than whatever formatting you did.

 

[howtobeironic]

This is a lot to process, but better have a go at it piece by piece.

First off, when you were formatting, if you did this through Explorer, that's going to miss the EFI system partition which has the bootloader, so you will see the boot entry in the BIOS. Diskpart or a third party disk manager lets you delete that.

Second, have you tried to remake the USB after the system "repaired" it? It could have broken the image in it. And if you made the image using the Windows tool, try doing it once more with Rufus. Choose "Create ISO" in the Windows tool, note the created file. Run Rufus (it's portable), choose the USB on the dropdown, press "SELECT" and point to the ISO file. Make sure the boot type is UEFI/CSM and not MBR. Double check you chose the correct drive, hit "START", read the warnings (skip the "Windows customizations" box without checking anything), let the thing write the image. Unplug the flash, plug to the computer, boot into UEFI, "Boot" section, and double click on the USB entry (if it has two entries, the "UEFI" one), that should explicitly boot into the flash. The intended thing to happen here is to see the installer screen. If that doesn't work, you can try it with an HBCD/Linux image to see if that boots.